


Heartbreak Ridge

by the-wandering-whumper (water4willows)



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Bombings, Head Injury, Plane Crash, Surgery, Unconscious, War, Whump, collapse, concussion, helicopter crash, hurt b.j. hunnicutt, hurt hawkeye pierce, internal injuries, part one, seriously injured hawkeye, seriously worried b.j.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-12-12 19:36:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20987621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water4willows/pseuds/the-wandering-whumper
Summary: He takes oaths.  There are rules.  Most men are expected to follow those rules.  They raise their right hands and promise to always do so.  Hippocratic.  Geneva.  God and country.  Most men honor the oaths they have taken. So what happens when they don't?An unexpected attack on the 4077th puts more than one life on the line.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of a planned two part series. A humungous thanks to Jo (fyeahvulnerablemen) for the beta. She's a saint and the only reason this is being published. I've been working on it for years. I will be posting a chapter a week, maybe more.

_I’m A Heartsick Soldier On Heartbreak Ridge_   
_Across from the River of Si_   
_Where the shells burst around me_   
_And cover the sound of a poor lonely heart when it cries_

_ -Ernest Tubb _

He takes oaths. There are rules. Most men are expected to follow those rules. They raise their right hands and promise to always do so. Hippocratic. Geneva. God and country. Most men honor the oaths they have taken, like the men in the sweeping, epic adventures he used to read as a child, and continues to read to this day. 

BJ Hunnicutt believes in oaths. It’s why he’s taken so many, promised so many things to so many people. 

He will fight in a war he doesn’t believe in. He will first do no harm. He will not fire upon the enemy’s medical facilities. He respects the rules of engagement. Unfortunately, in war, not everyone always does.

There isn’t much room up on the helipad of the MASH 4077th. The small space they chose to serve as a landing zone when they set up camp here who knows how long ago is little more than a pile of rocks formed from the craggy Korean topography. Some formation left over from prehistoric times. Far enough away from camp that the blown up dust is supposed to stay out of their tents, close enough that it doesn’t. The trade off, he figures, is that it gets their patients from point A to point B a little quicker. Grit-free sheets be damned.

He’s standing near that hill right now, watching as the corpsman beside him leans against the side of an ambulance that shields them from the burning sun, smoking a cigarette while they wait. BJ doesn't smoke, never has, but during the unbearable bouts of inactivity here on this base, the times of sheer boredom no war propaganda flick ever told him about, it’s pretty hard not to consider taking up the habit.

They’re waiting for helicopters, which is mostly what living on a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital entails. Waiting around. Waiting for that sound. The whoosh of blades as they cut through the air and deliver them the battered remains of what used to be soldiers. It is BJ’s job, he’s discovered, to take these remains and attempt to reconstruct them back into human beings. Walking, talking, able to get back to the front, perfectly capable human beings. That used to be easy for BJ. He used to have time, vast medical facilities, and state of the art equipment at his disposal. Now he’s lucky if he can get his hands on sterile sutures or gauze to get them stable enough to send them to the places that have all that. Places far away from this particular place.

* * *

It’s summer in South Korea. Everything is dry and dead and it hasn’t rained in over a month. Brown grasses sway in ineffectual breezes and the dust is incredible. It reminds him of the desert, though it's unlike any desert he’s ever been to. Instead of long winding highways cut into mountain sides with tourist traps at every bend, there are irate villagers who are more interested in finding their livestock water than hearing his woes about not being able to stop for gas and purchase a Coke from the local merchants. Things here run on hay and water and four legs. It’s the soldiers who bring the noise.

Oh yeah, and the bullets. Fighting on the front has ramped up a bit in the past few months. It stalks them, edging ever closer, like the wildfires that have been devouring the countryside ever since the rain stopped. The 4077th hasn’t been affected but, like the fighting, it’s something they pay attention to. 

As is the case with any time conditions heat up between North and South, there has been an influx of wounded. He’s lost count of how many hours he’s been in surgery. How many millions of yards of silk he's gone through patching the bellies of soldiers so they can be sent back, or out, or home. Sometimes the macabre urge to sew himself up in their mangled remains, just so he can get out of here, barges into his brain and he doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry at it. Would he get far? What would they do to him once they found him? Not like they can throw him in prison. They need him too much. Who else are they going to get to make humans out of the piles of desiccated meat the maw of the front lines keeps hurling out at them? BJ is, of course. And Charles and Potter and Hawkeye and any number of the other nameless, faceless doctors that have meandered through the MASH 4077th.

BJ shuffles forward and shields his eyes from the intense sun to scan the horizon. Hawkeye is on his way back. Hawkeye, who pulled the short straw and has been helping out at an aid station right on the front lines, will be home soon. The last blast of radio communication they’d received had promised as much.

_ Aid station fell. Incoming wounded. Get everyone ready. _

But most importantly…

“_ I’m fine, just be ready.” _

They’ve been at this for six days. The helicopters just keep coming and the only reason BJ is here and not down prepping in the OR is that the man who should be here performing this particular job was in such dire need of a rest that they found him sleeping in the mess, his left cheek pressed into something BJ had affectionately taken to calling Army Surprise. And so BJ has taken his place. Partly because he’s needed, and partly because he misses his friend. He hasn’t seen Hawk in over a month and is in need of his easy wit and cheerful smile. ...And maybe because there might have been some chatter about a VIP patient coming in with him. Probably some General’s son. Probably some kid BJ will regret plunging his hands into, because he will inevitably die, as men at the front often do, and the doctors of the 4077th will take the heat, because they’re all the general will have to yell at. Doctors at a field hospital who didn’t have enough time or enough resources to give his kid the attention he needed. The realization of who’s fault it really is will come later. When they’re all back home in the states, and this godforsaken war is nothing but a distant, repressed memory. BJ has a feeling that he will be so good at suppressing the bad memories that, if he plays his cards right, he might be able to convince himself eventually that he had a good time here and it was all fun and games with an unusual bunk mate.

“Incoming,” Radar says, sidling up to BJ by the ambulance and pulling him from his thoughts. Like BJ, Walter “Radar” O’Reilly is on loan to the helicopter welcoming committee today. There are a lot of people gathered here actually. They’re expecting a lot of wounded.

“Four birds, completely full,” Radar continues, as easily as if he were reading BJ’s lunch order back to him. Radar is many things to many people. He all but runs this camp from the antechamber of Potter’s office and BJ knows him probably as well as anyone can be known, having shared the trauma of war and loss with him repeatedly. But BJ is pretty sure he will never, _ ever _ get used to Radar’s uncanny, almost preternatural ability to detect incoming choppers better than any air traffic controller ever could. He’s about to open his mouth and tell the Corporal as much, when he hears the first of the birds approach.

The actual landing zone is small. It’s really only meant for one chopper at a time. (Whoever made that engineering leap when designing the camp should be stoned.) Two, if the pilots are good ones. Most of them are, but it makes for one hell of a mess on the ground. There’s scrambling and ducking, and cleaning kicked up grime out of the crevices of his body for weeks after it happens. And then there’s the noise. You'd think the cacophony at the front is enough to drive you mad, try hanging out in a MASH unit while four helicopters, stuffed with wounded, all try and land at the same time. It’s deafening. It’s confusing. It’s chaotic and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up getting yourself killed. Or worse, someone else.

BJ watches the helicopters approach, wishing he had a pair of earplugs he could force into his ear canals. Even some tissue would do. He pats his pockets for good measure, but knows he won’t find any there to help. He thinks he might have had a pair of earplugs once, but like most things of value at the 4077th, they eventually disappeared.

The sun is headed toward the South Korean horizon, dusk putting it to bed like the dutiful time keeper it is. Mountains that would have been pretty, had they not been the backdrop to unimaginable horrors for the past several years, loom purple in the distance and reach for the sinking sun like they miss it or something: _ come here, sleep, hide your face for a while behind me _. He has people in his own life who act like that for him at times. Whole mountain ranges of them. He reminds himself to hold them a little closer from now on.

A sinking sun means light in his eyes as he steps out from behind the ambulances to tilt his head and blink into that light. He shields his eyes with a hand and watches as the four promised helicopters appear on the shimmering horizon, heat and light messing with their edges until they’re unintelligible blurs and BJ has to look away. The dust beneath his feet is already starting to stir, and rocks skitter as the pounding of helicopter blades gets louder and closer. Soon BJ won’t be able to hear a thing but that rumble and whoosh and the occasional cry of the corpsmen as they attempt to communicate with one another over the din. He’s hardening himself even as he waits, ready to be unresponsive to whatever the helicopters are bringing him. Except for Hawkeye. With Hawkeye he doesn’t care how he reacts. He’ll crack a smile. He’ll jump up and down and waive his arms like some stupid kid being reunited with a best friend he hasn’t seen in weeks. Because he is just some stupid kid who is excited to finally be reunited with his friend. A 4077th without Hawkeye is a boring 4077th and Charles has been driving him crazy. He needs wit right now, desperately, not insufferable ego.

When the helicopters are closer, BJ risks another look, and this time the sun has set enough that he can actually see the craft approaching. 

Four because Radar is never wrong. One of them even has someone hanging out the side of it. A figure too tall and gangly to be a real soldier. 

Hawkeye. 

Something twinges in BJ’s chest. He loves his wife, but he loves this man too. It’s not sexual, it’s not physical. It’s the kind of love born in trenches. When you’ve dug yourself in, the war rages around you, and someone else jumps down into that hole with you and you know in that moment that you both will do anything to get the other one through this alive. There are similarities between you. You both have a common goal. And that ends up being all you need to form a bond and never leave each other’s sides. That is how BJ loves Hawkeye. Not as a lover, but as a brother. A more intense, and stronger bond, if he thinks about it.

And so BJ does not hide the smile on his face when he’s pretty sure he catches Hawkeye’s attention from the ground. He doesn’t blush when he starts waving his arms over his head like a madman, and grins just as crazily. 

Hawkeye is here. Hawkeye is home. Well, as _ home _ as an army base in the middle of the South Korean countryside can be.

Hawkeye’s chopper is last in line, so BJ can’t just stand there and wait for him to land. As happy as he is to see Hawkeye returned to the 4077th, he has a job to do, and surges forward when the first of the helicopters lands and a second one hovers close by like its pilot is thinking of trying to maneuver itself onto the landing pad as well. He bends at the middle. He’s never tried to approach the helicopters any other way. He’s pretty sure they’re tall enough that there’s no risk of being decapitated, but it's like his instincts are physically incapable of allowing him to approach the bubbles carrying the wounded at anything other than a comical crouch that’s bad on the back and equally as brutal to the calves. He helps the corpsmen pull their first patient from the protective plastic bubble at the side of the craft and makes a face. The young soldier, dressed in an officer’s uniform and reeking of top-brass yet looking too young to be here, is a mess. 

BJ has stopped trying to think in clinical terms. He got rid of that silly habit two days and three gins into arriving at the 4077th. Medical terminology is thrown out here now like they’re ordering from a fast food menu. _ I’ll have one order of Meatball Surgery, please. _

The kid’s entire left flank is charred, a meaty mess with raw pink flesh pocked by deep black swatches of burnt flesh. In Korea, shrapnel is unapologetic. In this case it has taken other pieces of this young man away with it, and white bone is visible in some places. He never should have made it past triage at the aid station.

_ Damn it, Hawk. _

If BJ knew where Hawkeye was at that moment, he would have strangled him. And yet… chances are this kid really is the son of some top-brass officer if Hawkeye let him get this far. But he is BJ’s problem now, because there is no way he’s leaving this kid’s side. He will ride in the ambulance with him back to the OR, accompany the stretcher into the room they work so hard to keep sterile, scrub until his cuticles bleed, and try to save this kid’s life. A quick check of his pulse yields positive results so BJ gives the signal to move him and doesn’t even have the time to turn around and check for Hawkeye as he raises a bottle of fluids above his head and races alongside the gurney.

It really is loud by the landing site, so maybe that’s why he doesn’t hear it. He’ll wonder later if Radar might have, even over the booming bass of the helicopter blades. Whether the Corporal with the superpowers ever shouted a warning. A warning swallowed up by the noise as soon as it was issued.

A shell explodes in the field next to the landing pad. The ground beneath BJs’ feet lurches and they all go down. Like bowling pins. Like the dominoes he used to stand end on end with his niece when she was very young. They used to count the spots on the tiles, too. She always loved numbers. He hopes that Erin will, too.

BJ is thrown forward and his first instinct is to cover his patient. So that’s what he does. He covers the charred remains of the officer with his body and covers his head with his hands as best he can.

For unknowable moments all there is is heat and screaming and noise. He’s reminded again of rules and how there are some that you are not supposed to break. He first does no harm. Pretty high up there is also you don’t shell the hospitals, not even if they belong to the enemy. BJ can’t even remember the number of North Korean soldiers he’s patched up over the years, how many he’s saved. Some the government took, others they let walk out of camp and never spoke of again. But the point is, even when Frank was still around, they never turned them away, never denied them care. It was how you did things, even in war. Because it was the right thing to do. Because, contrary to the propaganda train, they were all human out here, and BJ took an oath.

Whatever the reasoning behind the shelling, he knows it’s not supposed to be happening. Not here. The big red cross, painted across more than one of the buildings here in the compound, is supposed to keep it from happening. Like their own personal totem. A powerful magical symbol that keeps away the heavy artillery but allows the wounded through. He believes in that magic, has put all his faith in it, which is why this all seems so fucking impossible.

There are explosions so intense they rock the ground beneath him and send debris pelting down over him, but BJ doesn’t dare move. Every so often pain erupts on some extremity, but instinct keeps him head down and curled protectively around his patient. The kid so young. He shouldn’t even be here. None of them should even be here.

He stays tucked in until something that doesn’t even sound like an artillery shell hits the ground and produces a shockwave so intense, BJ and his soldier are pushed back a few feet across the rocky ground. Something hard slams into the side of him, right into the space where his head meets his neck, and the world around him dims.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

He’s lost for a time. Not unconscious, per se, but lost nonetheless. A million and a half particles spread across a million and a half miles, scattered and irrelevant. Stretched as much as a man can be stretched, before dying. Reaching that moment when he can go no further and time stops. Lost, lost, lost. That is, until the connective tissue holding it all together, the strands of his awareness, stretched and fraying, begin to retract. They snap back into place like a rubber band around his wrist, shocking him back to the present with all the subtleness of an atomic bomb.

He coughs into the white dirt beneath him. Dust invades his nose, finds its way down his windpipe and sets his chest on fire. Lights that same pyre at his neck and side. He presses a hand to each while he tries to recall what’s been done to him, panting into the sun-bleached earth all the while. 

_ Pain. Crash. Save him. _

BJ risks cracking his eyes open, but only one cooperates, and even opening that one is a mistake. Pain so terrible he has to shut the eye again assaults him and he puts his hands to the sides of his head with a pitiful groan. Its like twin daggers being stabbed into the grey matter of his brain. It's a migrating pain, too. Starts at the top of his head, moves to the spaces behind his eyes, and then finally settles at the back of his skull where it skulks there in the dark like a coiled snake waiting to strike. When he risks opening the good eye again after several moments of careful breathing, he finds he can tolerate the pain enough to keep it open this time.

BJ rolls slowly onto his back and the world rolls with him. Dizziness and nausea wash over him as the vertigo strikes fast and hard. He empties his stomach out into dirt, powerless against the pain that consumes him and grays out his vision. He can’t even recoil from the foulness. It hurts too much. 

_ What the hell happened to me? _

BJ can’t remember. His memories are nothing more than a jumbled mess of sensation and emotion battering around in his skull. Fear, worry, dread, loss... There are people out there depending on him. He can feel it. There are places he’s supposed to be. Important places, only he can't remember where they are. And it hurts so damn much when he tries. Connections spark and then sputter out over and over, aggravating that coiled snake at the base of his skull. He’s pretty sure there’s a word for this, if he could just remember it. 

Oh yeah...

_ Concussion. _

BJ risks a quick glance around at his surroundings. He’s back on his side with his head in his hands but his vision appears to be working alright. All around him an impenetrable white fog has descended. It obscures everything but the sky above him. That he can see perfectly. The bluish bruise of dusk, the cold, cold stars popping out like a smattering of silver across the evening sky. Every so often he can see shapes in the fog, hear what he thinks are voices, but none of it makes any sense to him. He has no words for what he sees, no names. All he seems to know is that it isn’t a good sign that the hands he pulls away from his face are covered in blood.

_ Blood. Helicopter. Explosion. Wounded. _

Ok, so he’s wounded. He’s hit his head somehow. And that’s not water on his hands. Its warm, and not ocean warm. Not the warm of Richardson’s Bay on an August afternoon. It’s stagnant, like a pool left over in the jungle after it rains. The kind of water the animals won't even drink…. BJ shakes his head, concerned by the way his thoughts keep wandering. He needs to focus. He needs to remember what in the hell happened.

_ Explosions. They were shelling. But they weren't supposed to be. This is a hospital for goodness sake. Something exploded. He was protecting someone... _

BJ once again tries to push himself up from the ground, ignoring the droplets of blood that fall from the end of his nose and splatter against the ground like macabre little raindrops. If there were puddles beneath him, he imagines they would ripple. His brain hallucinates them for a moment or two before his shaky arms collapse beneath him and he’s back in a heap on the ground. So much for the charge.

Every so often BJ imagines he can hear screaming coming from the fog. Little by little as his awareness returns he can sense people around him. They’re like ghosts in the mist. Ghouls, really, with blood on their faces and haunted eyes. So many haunted eyes in this war. So many men and women floating in and out of his life, out of his OR, with blank faces, all thanks to the front… or good Ether.

“Dr. Hunnicutt, are you alright?”

A pale, white figure emerges from the mist, and for a moment, BJ is terrified. His addled brain insists its a ghost, something unnatural sent from hell to drag him down and put out his light forever. But he challenges the thought, shakes his head a bit, though it hurts, and tries to make his eyes see, truly see. The young man approaching him is _ not _ a spectre from his nightmares, but a soldier, and one covered from bow to stern in the same white dust BJ is covered in. A soldier who apparently knows his name.

Before BJ can even blink, the young man is crouched beside him. There are white hands roaming over his body and then helping him to sit up. White arms that support him as they take it slow, allowing BJ to adjust to the new position without throwing up again, stopping when he winces and cries out with a hand pressed to his side. Blood that was once running down the side of his face changes directions and begins the slow steady plunge downward toward his neckline. When it’s all over, there are two soldiers standing in front of him with nervous looking faces. But after a moment of careful blinking, they coalesce into one and BJ is reminded how very much he hates concussions.

“Sir, can you hear me? Do you know what day it is?” BJ opens his mouth to answer, but the soldier chooses that exact same moment to shine a pen light into his eyes and then BJ isn’t thinking about much of anything after that. He’s pretty sure he throws up again, clinging to the soldier’s arm, noticing a band there that identifies him as a medic. BJ has a similar band stored in his foot locker back at the Swamp. The one he only brings out on special occasions, when he’s needed in the field, when he needs something to set him apart from the rest of the soldiers. A blinking beacon in the dark: _ I am a medic. I’m here to help. _

“My head…” he groans, reaching up his hands once more to press them to either side of his face. The world goes dim like before, the sounds of the world fall away until it's just him in the muffled quiet. They got him good. Robbed him of his senses and of himself. He may not remember much, but he knows he doesn’t have time for this. There are places he needs to be… people he needs to help…

“My patient,” he says suddenly as a new memory resurfaces. “Where’s the kid?”

“All of the wounded are being taken back to the hospital, Dr. Hunnicutt. We need to get you down there, too.”

“I’m alright,” he grumbles, pushing away the white hands that come at him, trying in vain, yet again, to get up from the ground on his own. But like before, it doesn’t work. Vertigo and now the medic work against him, pushing him back down. He’s about to start yelling when something cold and wet starts running down the side of his face.

“What in the hell??” he sputters, but then realizes what the medic is trying to do. He stills, letting the cool, heavenly moisture run down his face and work at the crud in his eye. The medic uses some kind of rough cloth to wipe something away, and then all of a sudden, BJ can see through both eyes again. The lid opens when he asks it to and he nearly cries out in relief. The medic hands over the cloth and the canteen he was using, and BJ uses both to clean off his face even more. Blood and grime go with it. When he hands back the cloth, it’s filthy and near black with gore.

“You’ve got a pretty nasty cut on your neck, Sir. May I?” The medic holds up antiseptic and a few bandages and BJ nods his agreement. The water has woken him up, cleared a bit of the fog from his brain. Turning his head to the side, he tries not to wince each time rough fingertips prod his open wounds.

“Are you hurt anywhere else, Sir?”

BJ shakes his head automatically. He has more pressing things to worry about. “What happened?” he asks. 

The medic seems to be very focused on his work but does answer. “We got hit by the enemy, Sir. Best as I can guess from what people have been telling me, they were actually trying to bring down a fighter jet. I think we were just in the way. Someone said the plane ended up in the minefield.”

“The minefield?” BJ repeats, trying to fit this new information into the framework of what little he remembers. It doesn’t fill the holes, but it does give some context to the flashes of memory he’s recalling. His head pounds in retaliation for looking, blurring his vision for a brief moment, but he can’t help himself.

He was up on the hill waiting for wounded. He found them and he was happy, but not really. The kid was in rough shape. He was mad about that. Or was he? There was an explosion. More than one, actually. He was thrown down and then back. It hurt. Something hit him he...

“Sir? Dr. Hunnicutt?” BJ opens eyes he never realized he closed and blinks into the two faces of his medic, who now has him by the shoulders and is shaking him ever so slightly. “Dr. Hunnicutt!”

“What?” The fingers gripping his shoulders are long. Good for poking around the insides of patients. BJ has long fingers, too. His mother had hoped he'd be a piano prodigy, but it wasn’t meant to be. He’d found other uses for those hands, though. Like meatball surgery and patching up young men in a war he no longer believes in...

“Dr. Hunnicutt!” The long fingers dig into his shoulders harder. He tries to shake them off, but they remain steadfast. It occurs to him that there’s no need to struggle and he stills. The kid is just trying to do his job. 

“What?” He asks again, and for what he suspects will not be the last time.

“I asked if you lost consciousness, sir.” The young medic looks beyond concerned at this point. Like he’s half a second away from throwing BJ over his shoulder and running him back to camp himself. 

“I- I don’t think so,” he answers truthfully, though his medic looks far from convinced. “Look, I got my bell rung pretty good, but I never blacked out.” He wants to add that he’s fine, but he’s recovered enough by now to know it would be a lie. He’s not dying, but there’s no denying there’s something wrong with his head. 

“You have a wound on your head and one on your neck,” his medic explains as he begins packing his things back up into his field kit. Things BJ can’t even remember him pulling out. It’s disorienting to realize his reality is so fragmented. It makes him dizzy just thinking about it. 

“I don’t see any debris in either, but you need to get back to the hospital to get them both cleaned out and stitched up.”

BJ presses a hand to the side of his face and fingers the soft ridges of the gauze. It’s so strange to be on the other side of this. To be the one accepting aid, rather than giving it. It feels wrong all of a sudden. Wrong and uncomfortable. He should be out on the hill helping people. Not sitting here in the dirt. 

“They can treat your concussion down there, too,” the medic continues, oblivious to BJs internal struggle. “Other than a bump on the head and a few bruises, I don’t think there’s anything else going on, but you need a proper exam.” BJ startles a little when those hands return to his shoulders. He struggles to meet the eyes of his medic as nausea assails him. “Do you think you can get back to camp on your own, or should I fetch you a stretcher?”

The idea of being taken down off the landing pad on a stretcher makes BJ cringe. He thinks he would rather die than endure that kind of humiliation, so he goes with option one. “I think I can manage on my own.”

The medic has finished with his pack and is rising from the ground. He extends one of those white arms down to BJ who takes it. He does his best to keep his eyes open as he’s pulled up, but it does nothing to stop the dizziness. His legs give out beneath him. His center of gravity is lost. He can no longer find true north. The Korean’s have taken it from him, always taking, blasted it away with their endless bombs. 

BJ ends up back on his ass in the dirt, cursing his weak, human brain as his medic fusses over him. He digs knuckles into his eyes trying to ease the pain there. It’s like someone is attempting to carve his eyeballs out of their sockets with serving spoons. And not your normal, every day spoons. But the big silver ones your mother only brings out on special occasions. Why is this happening. What did he ever do to deserve such pain. 

BJ chokes on a sob as his medic disappears into the fog. He’s not gone long, and when he returns, he has another soldier with him.

“Dr. Hunnicutt, this is Jeremy. He’s going to help you get back to camp.”

Jeremy is wearing a pristine green uniform and is so muscular, he looks like he might be able to bench two times BJ’s weight at the gym. “We don’t have enough men to carry you down on a stretcher and I have more wounded to treat. Jeremy will take care of you.” 

His medic is swallowed up by the meandering fog before BJ can even say anything. No goodbye, no see you later, no word of thanks on BJ’s part. At least, none that he can remember. But isn’t that how it always is in this war? Meetings and partings. Nameless faces. Ships passing. With his concussion, he wonders if he’ll remember the medic at all.

It takes a great deal of effort, but BJ does eventually makes it up from the ground. Jeremy does most of the work and BJ has to hang off the side of him to make it stick, but he’s on his own two feet now, and that is a victory in and of itself. A victory that makes him want to smile, once the nausea has passed. They get so few of those here.

Jeremy is patient with him and waits for BJ to give the all clear before dragging him off into the fog. A fog he’s quickly coming to realize is nothing but smoke. A thick, meandering wall of it that swallows them whole and bleaches out the world around them. 

They walk for what feels like hours, neither of them speaking as they pass other people in the murk. People who are fine and people walking around as though dazed. Whole people and some of them not so whole, but all of them with those same hollow eyes. The emptiness of eyes that have seen the horrors of war. The scraped out husks of people who have lived to see the war brought to their doorstep first hand. The lost. The foolish, like him, who let themselves believe they were safe here, and yet had just watched half their camp explode. BJ wants to help all of them, but there’s the small matter of his concussion. He can’t walk straight, let alone practice medicine, even as little pieces of him die every time they pass someone in need of his help. He makes a pact with himself then. So far they haven’t run into anyone who looks like they’re dying. But if they do, he’ll make Jeremy stop. It’s a good oath and one he has to hold to a lot sooner than he expects. 

They haven’t seen anyone for a bit when the screaming starts. At first BJ thinks it’s just a trick of his mind, but then the wind picks up and the smoke parts and it’s like a scene from the front lines playing out before his eyes. An ambulance has been knocked over, bits of hot metal smoking from a hole in its ruined side. The large red cross that had once adorned it has been obliterated and people are scrambling around it. The screaming is coming from beneath as the gathered people try desperately to roll the ambulance back over onto its wheels. With the slope of the depression in the ground its leaning against, it just might be possible.

“We have to help,” BJ says to his soldier when Jeremy’s steps falter. The young man looks conflicted, but it’s like he was built for this. He could probably go over there and give the ambulance one good push and set it right again. There’s no contest here.

“I’ll be fine. See?” BJ insists as Jeremy continues to waffle. He straightens and pushes away. Vertigo threatens to topple him, but he somehow manages to stay up on his own two feet. 

He shoves the soldier forward. “Go.”

He does. He leaves BJ standing there and takes off for the ambulance at a sprint, the screams of the man trapped beneath the bus echoing around them. BJ watches him go with a hand on his side. Breathing hurts, probably more than it should, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that right now. He’s got to get himself ready for when they pull the trapped guy out in case he’s needed. He breathes as deeply as he can, wondering where in the world he was going to get the stamina to pull this off.

“Hunnicutt!” BJ snaps his head up at the sound of his own name, grimacing as wounds pull and his head pounds. Radar O’Reilly emerges from the crowd around the ambulance, a huge grin breaking out across his dust and blood covered face. The smile is so infectious, BJ can’t help but mirror it with one of his own as the diminutive Corporal starts sprinting towards him. For a moment, BJ is reminded of those National Geographic photos. The ones of children playing in war zones. It strikes him then how very young Radar is. He belongs in this war just about as much as BJ does.

The two men clasp arms as soon as they’re close enough to touch. 

“Oh geeze. I thought you were dead!” Radar grips his arms hard, like he needs proof BJ is really there. That he’s not just some apparition created by the smoke. BJ grips back just as tightly, but his motives are different. He needs proof that his friend is okay.

“Radar,” he asks thickly, “are you alright?”

The Corporal looks down at his uniform, the front of which is splattered with blood. “Oh,” he says as though surprised to see it in such a state. His eyes go wide as he looks back up at BJ. “That’s not mine.” There’s probably more to that story, but BJ has no time. 

“Did I hear right? Did a plane crash?” BJ asks, secretly giving Radar a good once over with his eyes as the Corporal launches into his story. Radar looks okay. He really is okay.

“Yeah! Can you believe it??” They don’t let go of each other’s arms. BJ’s not sure he’d be able to stay standing if they did. 

“It ran right into the helicopters and then crashed into the minefield. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life! I think every single bomb in that field went off at once.”

BJ feels sick again. How could they? This place is off limits. Sacred ground. You’re not supposed to attack the hospitals, no matter who they belong to. 

He swallows down the sourness gathering at the back of his throat. “Is everyone else okay?” 

BJ regrets the question as soon as it leaves his mouth, because by “everyone” he means his friends. Those are the people he needs to hear about, even though the guilt nearly eats him alive. Radar seems to understand what he’s really asking.

“You were the only doc up here,” Radar answers without judgement. “Well, except for Captain Pierce.”

BJ blinks as something nudges at his brain. There’s a little clicking noise, like something out of alignment suddenly sliding back into place. A rearrangement of sorts. The world rights itself and suddenly, everything that was missing before is there. 

BJ staggers and then goes down hard onto his knees, pulling Radar along with him, the pain from his head and the rocky ground nothing compared to the fissure opening up across his heart. He clutches at his chest. 

_ Hawkeye _. 

He’s forgotten all about Hawkeye. 

Dumb, stupid, screw this man’s army, _ I’m going to sweet talk my way through the nurses and out of this war all while distilling gin in my bunk _, Hawkeye Pierce. His friend. His rock. His anchor in this batshit crazy place.

BJ distantly registers Radar calling his name, but ignores it completely. He pushes the hurt and the confusion away and replaces it with something focused, something hard. Something he doesn’t often let himself bring out and use, even here in Korea. 

Before Radar can stop him, BJ is back up on his feet and charging back into the smoke. The smoke re-thickens around him until the world and Radar are lost to it. 

And so is BJ.

He forgot about Hawkeye. How could he have been so stupid? The world had rained fire down on his head and he forgot his own best friend in favor of a concussion and a head wound. What kind of a comrade at arms did that make him? He doesn’t even know if his patient made it. His first trial by fire in the South Korean countryside, and he’s failed miserably.

People pass him in the smoke. They don’t look like ghosts anymore, but real humans. Some of them he stops to ask if they’ve seen Hawkeye. None of them have and it tears that hole in his heart open a little wider each time they say no. Still, he persists. He’s laser focused on tracking Hawkeye down and nothing will stop him now. Nothing but…

“_No_,” he mutters to himself as he presses on. He refuses to entertain that idea. Not yet. Not until he’s checked every inch of the 4077th. 

BJ eventually reaches the crest of the small rise housing the landing pad and gazes out over the fields below. The sun is nearly set and the winds have pushed the smoke of the burning fires off to other parts of the world. Adding further illumination to the carnage laid out before him are the camp flood lights which have begun switching on behind him. He can hear the hum of each one as it comes to life, casting a plaid glow over the destruction. Automatic sentinels performing their duties in spite of the events of the day.

The reports are accurate. Someone _ has _brought down a plane, and it sits smoking in the bombed out remnants of their old minefield. Also scattered amidst the fields below are the twisted and charred remains of three of the four helicopters that had been hovering over the 4077th. 

Like before by the ambulance, clumps of people surround some of the crash sites. BJ chooses the closest one and picks his way down the hill carefully. It’s slow going, partially because he’s still incredibly unsteady on his feet, and partially because the rocky terrain seems hell bent on trying to trip him. He makes it somehow and grabs the shoulders of the first person he comes to, spinning them around as he yells.

“Pierce, has anyone seen Pierce?” 

He feels a little manic as the poor nurse’s eyes go wide and she looks like she wants to scream. He can only imagine what he must look like and immediately lets go. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to find Captain Pierce.”

“T-They pulled out the survivors out a few minutes ago but I didn’t see him. You might try over there.” She points a shaky finger over towards the next crash site.

”Thanks,” BJ mutters, and makes his staggering way off to the next helicopter. This one he finds empty, its occupants and pilot either extricated or helped off away to camp after help arrived. 

The third helicopter pilot was not so lucky and BJ slows as he approaches this scene. 

Mere moments ago, things had been moving forward at such a pace he could barely make sense of it all, let alone absorb what was happening and let it affect him. Here, at this crash site, the atmosphere is different and it physically slows him down. The air is thick as time slows to a crawl and smoke billows and metal burns. The people here are quiet as they gently pull the remains of the pilot from the charred cockpit of the helicopter. The sides of the craft are twisted and torn, a metal doppelganger of the body they ease out from melted remnants of the instrument panel. 

They lift him carefully from the wreckage and BJ feels the urge to cry as he stands there and watches.

None of them will emerge from this tragedy unscathed. No one will wake up tomorrow and be the same person. Not after this. It’s enough to make him want to close his eyes and pray. Even if it would be nothing but lip service. Remnants of a habit from a bygone age when he believed in things like fate and a God who cared about the people of this world. A faith that survived med school, but not South Korea. Never Korea.

BJ isn’t ready for this yet. For the cold, burning flames creeping over his skin as he realizes he knows the man they’re pulling from the helicopter. Has had drinks with him in the Officer’s Club. Played cards with him over cigars in the Swamp. He isn’t ready for the crushing pressure of loss.

“Hunnicutt?” a slightly husky female voice says, cutting through his dark thoughts. “Hunnicutt what are you doing here?”

“I was j-just...” he stammers, opening wet eyes to meet the gaze of Margaret Houlihan, “I was just looking for Pierce.”

“Pierce?” She repeats before her eyes go wide. “Wasn’t he due back today? He wasn’t…” 

“That’s the last of them, Major,” a corpsman interrupts them, charging up as the litter carrying the remains of the pilot are loaded up into the back of a jeep. “We’re ready to get back to camp.”

Margaret looks back at BJ.

“Peirce isn’t here. Someone would have told me if he were. Come back to camp with us, Hunnicutt. They need you in the OR and I’m sure someone there will know something...” But BJ isn’t hearing it. He can't go back to camp. There’s an ache in his chest Margaret could never possibly understand. The Army has burned it out of her. It’s an ache he won’t be able to bear until…. well, until he _ knows _ . Until he finds _ him _ . Maybe that’s the stupidest, most selfish thing he’s ever done, but Korea has given him just one thing during his time here. One thing, one person. And he won’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t at least try and find it again. Find _ him _.

In the end, BJ just… walks away. There’s only one place left to look, though it feels like a bit of a last resort. He suspects he won’t find what he needs there. Maybe its remains, but not Hawkeye alive and well. 

“Dr. Hunnicutt, you get back here this instant!” Margaret calls after him, but he doesn’t listen. He’ll blame it on the head wound if it comes to that. She might out rank him, but he pulled a bullet from her side once and somehow that seems like it trumps everything else at the moment. 

* * *

BJ is twenty yards from the minefield when another explosion rocks the camp. Like before, he’s thrown to the ground as the world turns to fire and ash around him. He curls up into a ball on instinct, shielding his head and neck as he’s showered in dirt. Something hot and stinging hits the side of his leg but he doesn’t get the chance to worry about it. A half a second later a pair of rough hands are hauling him up from the ground.

“What in the hell are you doing down here?? This section isn’t secure!” The owner of the hands screams and BJ blanches. This is another familiar face; someone else he knows. _ Oh goodie. _ He’s an MP and his name is Pete Appleton, and BJ just happens to owe him money.

“Well, howdy,” he slurs a little stupidly as his brain sloshes against the sides of his skull thanks to the unexpected trip back up to his feet. He sways a bit but Appleton steadies him. He’s upright, but the movement has jostled his side. It’s been throbbing steadily for a while now, ever since his little jaunt through the smoke. The world whites out for a minute as his chest seizes up.

“I found ‘em,” Appleton barks into a walkie-talkie the size of Texas before BJ can recover enough to explain himself. There’s silence for a moment and then a horrible screech that sounds a bit like the stray cats who used to fight in the alley outside his office window back home. The dulcet tones of his commanding officer crackle over the airwaves a moment later.

“Pierce,” BJ says hoarsely over the noise Potter is making. “Ask him about Pierce.” 

Raidos. BJ hadn’t thought of those. Like so many other things today, he’d forgotten. 

Appleton ignores him as he tries to make out what Potter is saying. Breathless and in pain with the world starting to wobble again, BJ gives up and listens too.

“You tell that lil… liv… Hunnicutt… get his boney butt… soon as possible, or as… I will bend him… my knee... tan his hide until he can’t sit down for a week!” The last half of the tirade comes in crystal clear, and in stereo, as several other radios across the field broadcast the same message. BJ’s ears go crimson in embarrassment. He thinks about making a run for it, but doubts he’d make it very far. His adrenaline stores are running dangerously low, there’s a taste of something metallic at the back of his throat now, and he’s pretty sure the MP beside him is the only thing keeping him on his feet. He’d take his bed, the Swamp, anything at this moment to help ease the aches, but there’s still the matter of Hawkeye. He has got to find Hawkeye.

Appleton eyes BJ critically but must decide to take pity on him. When Potter is done adding a few embellishments to his threat that mostly have to do with horses and sports, Appleton says into the monstrous receiver, “He’s looking for Pierce.”

There’s a pause and more static. “Son, I don’t care what you have to do, hog tie him to the back of your jeep for all I care, but you best get that concussed SOB back to this OR pronto, or someone is going to be _ court-martialed _.”

Potter has played the court-martial card and while BJ knows the man would never bring one of their own up on charges if he could avoid it, it’s the worst thing anyone can ever say to an MP. 

BJ can see the wheels in Appleton’s head beginning to turn, feel his hold on BJ tighten, even as all the fight goes out of him and the pain in his chest, the one that belongs partly to Hawkeye and now partly to the internal injury he suspects he might have, throbs viscously. 

It’s over. His friend is dead. Potter didn’t come out and say it, but he might as well have. There was no “_ come on home son, we’ve found your friend _ .” No “ _ stand down now BJ, Pierce is down here waiting for you _.” His commanding officer’s silence speaks volumes.

Things start imploding in BJ’s chest as the minefield behind him gives up another of its buried secrets like it understands what he’s going through. As though it wants to show him it understands. That it, too, never asked to be made part of this war. 

_ What’s the point _, BJ thinks as he starts to cry. Appleton pulls him down to the ground and shields him from the worst of the blast. 

BJ’s not sure he wants to get up again when it’s over. His body hurts, his soul hurts, that little place where Hawkeye used to reside hurts and cries for its other half. It’s a horrible wail of a noise that launches itself into the void, searching for an answering response it knows will never come, but tries to find all the same. He suspects a moment later, that the wail might actually have come from him. His throat feels raw enough.

“Dr. Hunnicutt…”

The pressure surrounding BJ is lifted and he pulls in a lungful of air. He chokes on it, throwing up a congealed mess of dust and blood out onto the stubborn patchy grass that has always grown beside the minefield, his mind still far afield after the blast. BJ has always liked that grass. Nothing much grows in this place, except for that persistent scrub, like a big middle finger to them and the things they’d had the audacity to plant beneath it. _ Want to bury death machines here? Well then fine, I’ll cover them in wildflowers. _ He’s always felt a kinship with things that did that.

“Dr. Hunnicutt, can you hear me? We need your help.” The hand on his shoulder is rough, shaking him from his stupor and back into the world. He goes reluctantly and blinks Appleton’s blurry face into focus. The MP is crouched beside him. BJ is on his side on the ground, with no memory of how he got there.

“Dr. Hunnicutt, please! One of my guys got hit. Can you help him?”

BJ opens his mouth to answer, but stops short when he suddenly spots someone standing in the field just behind Appleton. He can hardly believe his eyes as he stares.

Is it grief? A hallucination? A trick of the light? Did all the adrenaline crashing, soul crushing pain and loss coalesce to trick his concussed brain into thinking that Hawkeye is there? 

BJ blinks again and the manifestation of his friend flickers but does not go away. A very alive looking Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce is standing just behind Appleton, waving wildly for BJ to get up off the ground and hurry up already. 

Get up and go. 

Go help. 

Go be the brilliant doctor Hawkeye knows he can be.

BJ’s body rallies and he sits up with some help from Appleton. The vision behind the MP begins to blink in and out of existence like a bad TV signal. 

“Ok Hawk,” he says before it can disappear entirely, unsure if he’s spoken the words aloud, or just in his head. “Of course I’ll help.”

Appleton seems relieved and thankfully does not pick up on the fact that BJ just had that entire conversation with a figment of his own imagination, and helps him to get back up from the ground.

BJ is like one, big walking bruise, the places he knows he’s hurt the worst throbbing the hardest. Head, side, ribs and now leg. He steadies himself against Appleton who seems to understand that he's not in the best shape at the moment and offers his support without comment. When they finally start walking across the field, BJ shoots one final glance over his shoulder to the place where he last saw Hawkeye. 

The field is empty, of course. Just like he knew it would be. But he had to check. He may always check now. 

When BJ finally gets his hands on a patient, it’s like the real work begins. And this is work he knows. Work he’s good at, that’s familiar. His hands move so deftly, he barely has to give them much thought. This is the kind of work that transcends pain and exhaustion and delirium. Work he can do in his sleep - and has done in his sleep a time or two - and has earned him his place here at the 4077th. He was too good for them to waste in some Seoul hospital. And low enough on the totem pole to be expendable. He hates the army most of the time for doing this to him, but sometimes he’s glad they sent him here, where he can do the most good. Where he’s needed and can save the most lives.

BJ can tell ten minutes into this, before jeep headlights turn on to help illuminate his little impromptu triage center, that the soldier in front of him is going to live. He’s stopped an arterial bleed with a clever bit of magic using the contents of a field kit, thanking the saints all the way that this happened within yards of a MASH unit and in a part of the world where Army jeeps are kept fully stocked and checked maniacally by a quartermaster who might run illegal cock fights in the empty lot behind the motor pool, but who took his job very, very seriously

The kid he’s just saved is removed and thrown into the back of a jeep and sped off towards camp on his orders. Another body on a litter is placed in front of him and it takes him thirty whole seconds of assessment before he realizes Appleton is shaking his shoulder and calling out his name.

He pauses and looks up. 

The sun is long gone. The stars are out in force now, blinking back at him in that big dark celestial bowl above South Korea.

“Dr. Hunnicutt, is this your man?”

BJ is not sure how he expected his reunion with Hawkeye to go, but it’s certainly not like this. It’s not for Appleton to literally have to point down at Hawkeye’s body for BJ to even realize he’s just just started triage on his best friend. He didn’t even notice. 

Damn him. And damn his poor, concussed brain.

“Hawkeye...” BJ chokes on the name as his hands begin to shake. 

It’s Hawkeye. The one thing he’s been searching for since all this began. The one person he’s willing to ignore direct orders for. His best friend. The one person in the entire universe who can take this war and make a joke of it, make it bearable for those around him. BJ has found his other half, and he nearly didn’t recognize him.

With those trembling hands, BJ goes for Hawkeye’s pulse first while a million and a half questions clatter around in his brain. _ Where did they find him? How did they find him? Where has he been all this time? _ They break against his skull until he realizes he’s giving them a rhythm that is perfectly timed to the errant heartbeat pushing against his fingertips. A heartbeat that is both too fast and too faint.

BJ’s assessment picks up speed after that. 

Hawkeye is unconscious, unmoving, and completely covered from head to toe in black soot. It makes it impossible for BJ to ascertain where residue ends and injury begins. If Hawkeye has burns, they can deal with that. Skin is something that can scab over and heal. Irreversible damage to internal organs, that might be another story. BJ has to check, has to triage. He has no idea how long Hawkeye was out there in this state, and these next few minutes are critical.

BJ runs his hands over every inch of Hawk’s salt and pepper scalp, pausing with his palms on either side of his friend’s face so he can study him, prove to his brain once and for all that this really is Hawkeye lying before him. He finds a huge knot at the back of his skull, sluggishly pumping blood, but not so much blood that he’s worried. He sets his hand on Hawkeye’s chest (shallow respirations), palpitates his abdomen (rigid and unyielding). It doesn’t take much to tear Hawkeye’s already torn t-shirt open further. What he reveals there scares the shit out of him.

“I need to get him into an OR,” BJ shouts up at Appleton as his hands automatically pack gauze into holes that shouldn’t be there. “Now.”

There’s a flurry of activity. On Appleton’s command, his men load Hawkeye into the back of a jeep. BJ launches himself into the passenger seat and before he can even thank Appleton or say goodbye to the man, the jeep is bouncing off across the craggy terrain and leaving the plane crash and the soldiers surrounding it, behind. BJ turns in his seat and lifts a hand. He only probably just imagines that Appleton returns the gesture, but he likes the idea that he did, and so he holds on tight to it. So many things have slipped through his fingers today. Perhaps the universe will forgive him if he keeps this one small thing.


	3. Chapter 3

The jeep bearing BJ and Hawkeye comes to a screeching halt in front of pre-op about three minutes later and BJ has never been so happy to see a place in his life. On any other day, the sight of the tent gives him heartburn. Today, he would kiss the damn thing if someone would let him. But there’s no time for irrational displays of affection like that. Not now. Not with Hawkeye all but bleeding out on the litter beside him. 

BJ jumps from the back of the jeep, cradling his injured side as things shift, and bellows for help.

The space outside the tent is crawling with people in various states of distress. Triage has been set up, but it looks like most of the injuries are superficial. Despite what his concussed brain thought at the time, there probably weren’t that many people up on that hill with him. He spies mostly head wounds and embedded shrapnel, and the line for the OR is blissfully nonexistent.  _ Good _ , maybe Hawkeye won't have to wait after all. 

BJ starts unstrapping the litter from the back of the gurney just as a corpsman with half his face covered in bloody bandages runs up to help. 

“Take that other end. I’ve got his head.”

They’re halfway to the pre-op door when it suddenly bursts open. BJ has to do a double take when a rather elegant Rita Hayworth look alike, resplendent in pearl earrings and pink evening gown, appears dramatically in the doorway. 

“BJ Hunnicutt? Is that you?” Klinger singsings as he sashays out into the warm Korean evening. “I thought I recognized your dulcet tones.” 

He’s smiling as he approaches but that smile quickly falters when the cross dressing Corporal finally gets his first good look at BJ and the litter he carries. Like flipping a switch, Klinger goes from section 8 to well-trained soldier in the blink of an eye. 

“Holy Toledo! Is that…”

“I found him,” BJ says desperately. Klinger will know. Klinger will understand. He will get him what he needs. “Help me get him inside.”

The evening gown clad Corporal is all business after that, and works quickly to clear a path for BJ and the gurney. 

BJ’s earlier call for help did not go unnoticed and people have begun to gather. They whisper and point. Hawkeye’s name hisses out in the night, but BJ hasn’t the time to care. He’s so close to his final destination. Somehow it feels like, if only he can get Hawkeye into pre-op, then the tides will change and all this will end in something other than heartbreak. 

Pre-op is what he needs. Lights, and space, and people who know what they’re doing.

BJ cleans his hands in a sink at the opposite end of the room as Klinger and the on duty nurses prep Hawkeye. He is transfixed as grey water tinged with pink swirls in the basin and then disappears down the drain. He watches it go, breath hitching in his throat when it dawns on him that that’s Hawkeye’s blood he’s washing off his hands.  _ Hawkeye’s _ . It’s enough to close his windpipe as he grips the sides of the basin with white knuckles and bowed head.

It’s too much. All of this is too damn much. His injuries…. Hawkeye’s condition. Everything is battering at his hatches, threatening to tear him apart. But he can’t. He can’t let it. BJ has weathered storms like this before and he can weather them again. He’s Hawkeye’s only hope at this point, and he can’t afford to break apart now. He needs to board up and batten down. Pull himself together and act like the world class surgeon he knows he is. That Hawkeye told him he was. He’s gotta reach down into that bag of tricks he brought with him to the war, the one he keeps hidden and to himself, and pull off one hell of a miracle.

By the time BJ has collected himself enough to turn around, the nurses have Hawkeye stripped bare and laid out on the table. But they’re just standing there in silence. BJ is about to yell at them, ask them what in the hell they’re thinking when it dawns on him what this moment really is. He snaps his mouth shut and takes a selfish moment to join them. 

They’re in shock. And they should be. This is  _ Hawkeye _ lying here before them. The 4077th’s own comedic relief. The camp funny man, perpetual and undeniable, striped down to his barest form. Naked, vulnerable, and near death. BJ is overcome by an irrational need to shake his bunk mate, demand he wake up and quit the joke. Because it’s not funny. Nothing about this is funny. But BJ won’t shake him, because it won’t do any good. There are no jokes left in South Korea.

Every part of Hawkeye’s body that wasn't covered by his uniform is layered in black soot. Heavy soot so dark you can’t even see the skin beneath. What flesh isn’t covered in that inky residue is marred by burns; angry, glistening, pus filled patches that glisten under the overhead lights. Something has torn a grotesque hole in his side as well and blood is welling up and then pooling beneath. Rounding out the entire unsettling scene is the compound fracture to his left tibia and the pristine white bone that can be seen poking out of the skin. It’s gut-wrenching, soul-shattering, and seemingly insurmountable. It reminds him of the General’s son who never should have made it past triage at the front.  _ Hawkeye _ never should have made it past triage, and that thought has BJ’s previous nausea and dizziness resurfacing. For the first time in a long time, he’s doubting his own abilities as a doctor. 

_ I can’t do this.  _

But he has to.

The room is not frozen in place for long, though it sure feels that way. A nurse steps forward and throws a respectful sheet over Hawkeye’s lower half. Placing a hand on Hawkeye’s chest, she sighs and then squares her shoulders. That is what stirs the medical professionals in them once again. That is what jump starts the world and starts it moving again. Starts  _ BJ _ moving again. He dons a pair of gloves and presses the bell of a borrowed stethoscope to Hawkeye’s chest with shaking hands. 

“Hawk? Hawkeye? Can you hear me?” No response. He orders blood and tests and drugs and then backs away from the gurney to let his team work. 

They’re like a well-oiled machine at this point. Another unexpected byproduct of this war; one born of necessity and blood. Because mistakes in a MASH can spell death, so often do spell death, and they all seem to realize that they can’t afford to make any mistakes tonight.

The enormity of what BJ is about to undertake hits him hard and he stumbles backwards a bit and into an empty gurney sitting behind him. He runs into it and the crash it makes when it hits the wall makes everyone turn and look at him. BJ can feel his face flush under their scrutiny. It’s like everyone in the room is seeing him for the first time. Really seeing him. They’re noticing the bandages on the side of his face and neck, the fact that he’s filthy and barely able to stand on his own two feet. Even Klinger abandons what he’s doing to come over to BJ and ask him if he’s ok. He pushes away from the gurney, determined to prove to everyone that he’s fine, that he can handle this, but his body apparently has other plans. His knees give out beneath him as the room dips and tries to tip him over. Klinger saves him from a date with the floor at the last second.

“Why don’t we find you some place to sit down for a second, eh Hunnicutt?” Klinger suggests with a wry smile and a wink to the room. The display seems to convince the nurses that the situation is under control and they resume their work without comment. Klinger seems serious about making him sit and tugs BJ forward and towards the scrub room. Seeing as how the Corporal just saved his butt, and after one last glance over at Hawkeye, he reluctantly follows. His team will take care of things. They can handle this and he trusts them to get his friend from pre-op and into the OR. Besides, the scrub room was his next stop anyway.

...

Klinger is uncharacteristically quiet as he eases BJ down onto one of the long benches they keep in the scrub room. He hovers there, just watching as BJ wraps his arms around his middle and squeezes his eyes shut. The sudden change in altitude and position has aggravated his injuries and tightened his chest. He can practically hear Klinger wringing his hands in worry, but BJ doesn’t have the strength left to open his eyes and assure the poor Corporal that he’s fine. Besides, it would probably be a lie. 

“I’m gonna…” Klinger eventually says, “go get you some clean scrubs.” He’s gone before BJ can even open his eyes and remind the man that he has all the clean scrubs he needs right here. 

Alone for the first time in hours, BJ takes a moment to let out a breath and run shaky hands through his gritty hair. He feels terrible and risks a glance at himself in one of the mirrors above the sinks across the room. What he sees there shocks him so badly he has to do a double take just to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. He hardly recognizes the man staring back at him from the glass. The one whose face is swollen in places and covered in bandages everywhere else. Bandages, he notes, that are saturated with blood, and so completely that some of it has trickled down his cheek and soaked into his collar. Desperate eyes, devoid of humor, stare back at him as he reaches up to touch the side of his face in shock. He had no idea it was this bad. No wonder people have been looking at him so strangely all day. He’s barely recognizable. He looks like one of those injured people he saw on the fog. Shell shocked and haunted. He looks like a ghost. He looks like a goddamn patient. 

BJ is still staring at himself in the mirror when the swinging door separating the scrub room from the OR bangs open. He snaps his head around, ignoring the dizziness and pain it causes, just in time to see Colonel Potter standing there. His scrub cap is slightly askew and bits of white hair poke out in places. His face is red with what BJ can only imagine is indignant anger - anger aimed at him, anger he deserves. 

Their gazes meet in the center of the room and BJ half expects to see sparks erupt, it’s so intense. He steels himself for the tirade he knows his coming. The horrible truths and heated words that are headed his way. The ones he won’t try to deny because anything cruel Potter has to say to him right now will be true, deserved.

But the words never come. 

Potter takes one look at BJ’s bruised and battered face and then all the bluster seems to go right out of him. But while his ire might dissolve, it’s replaced by something else. Something BJ can’t handle at the moment as he drops his gaze to the floor in defeat or exhaustion, he’s not sure which. Potter mutters some ancient expletive under his breath and then disappears back into the OR. The door snaps shut behind him and for a moment, BJ can’t help but wonder if he didn’t just hallucinate that entire exchange. Has to seriously question whether or not it was real, or just a figment of his imagination, because that was not at all how he expected his first meeting with Potter to go. The state he’s in, maybe it  _ was _ just a hallucination.

Sitting here in the quiet of the scrub room, things seem to be compounding fast, and he’s not entirely sure how to stop it, short of a shot of adrenaline directly to the heart. In addition to his injuries, the heaviness of what’s happened, of what he’s about to do, is hovering over him. It’s testing his defenses, looking for any weak spots it can exploit to gain entry. But like before, he can’t let it in. He still has hours of surgery ahead of him. He needs to be able to scrub up and save his friend. Save Hawkeye, who’s lying there, bleeding out on a gurney at his empty station in the OR, waiting for BJ to come and save him, to be the hero of this story... The only thing is…. he’s not entirely sure he can stand up anymore.

BJ slumps forward and cradles his aching head in his hands as moisture burns at the corners of his eyes. He can’t give up. He can’t let his body quit on him. Not yet.

Potter finds him in much this same position however many minutes later but BJ can’t bring himself to lift his head and look at his commanding officer again. Potter doesn’t seem to expect it and sits down next to him on the bench. It bows slightly beneath his weight. 

“I need to ask you a question, Hunnicutt,” he says quietly, though there’s an edge to his voice BJ’s never heard before. “I need to know if you’re alright. Be honest with me now, Son.”

BJ contemplates Potter’s question. Physically he feels like absolute crap. The adrenaline that has been fueling him ever since he found Hawkeye near the plane crash is starting to wear off and he can feel the places where he’s injured throbbing in time with his heart. Emotionally, he can sense the panic trying to claw its way out of his throat but so far, he’s been able to keep it at bay. Other than that, he can still function. He can still think straight. He might even have a marathon surgery session left in him somewhere. In fact, he has to. Hawkeye’s life depends on it. 

BJ lifts his head, swipes at the wetness near his eyes - the tracks he’ll never admit are tears - and answers the question. “I’m fine.”

That ‘something’ from earlier flits across the Colonel’s face again. Disappointment? Betrayal, maybe? Whatever it is, it makes BJ sick to his stomach. 

“I thought as much,” Potter sighs, his mouth turning into that thin line it always becomes when he’s faced with something (or someone) he doesn’t particularly care for. But before BJ can worry about it, someone else comes into the scrub room via the OR door. BJ glances over to see that it’s Margaret. The tired looking nurse pulls the surgical mask away from her face but BJ can’t tell what she’s thinking. And he’s too exhausted and in too much pain to try. 

“Margaret here is going to take you over to post-op and give you a proper exam,” Potter begins and BJ nearly loses it. He tries to get up from the bench, to plead his case on his own two feet with fists clenched, but he’s too far gone at this point to get very far. All he can manage is an angry scoot forward. 

“You can’t just...”

But Potter puts up a hand. “I can and I will, so shut your piehole, Hunnicutt!” 

BJ’s eyes go wide for a second. There’s no real malice behind the Colonel’s words, but they still sting like a slap in the face. He’s not sure Potter has ever spoken to him like this before. 

“Do you have  _ any _ idea how many rules you broke today? How many people you let down with that little stunt of yours? We thought you were dead until Margaret showed up!”

BJ looks down at his hands, dizzy with the implications of those words. The tunnel vision he’s been operating with since the landing pad is beginning to expand and it’s making his head hurt. He hadn't thought. He hadn’t thought of anything but Hawkeye since this whole nightmare began. Not himself, and certainly not others. BJ can feel the moment his battered defenses start to crumble.

“Winchester and I were up to our eyeballs in wounded! But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you Hunnicutt, because you were too busy galavanting all over hell's half acre looking for Pierce when there was an entire camp out there doing the exact same thing! You left us in the lurch! I had to call reinforcements in from the 8063rd, and for what?”

“I had to…”

“I’M NOT FINISHED!!” Potter all but yells, and BJ snaps his mouth shut. He’s never seen his CO this angry before, not even when he’s drowning in red tape and self-important Army bureaucrats. It rearranges something inside of BJ rather suddenly. He does his best to do right by his commanding officer. He owes the man that much at least. The Colonel has done so much for him over the years, and gotten him out of so many scrapes. He can't stand the idea that he’s let him down, that it really was betrayal he saw in his CO’s eyes a moment ago. BJ goes back to staring at his hands.

With military discipline that would have made Frank Burns jealous, Potter reins his anger back in and speaks levely again. Though BJ can tell in his periphery that the Colonel’s face remains slightly flushed and his words are short and clipped. 

“Now, the BJ Hunnicutt  _ I _ know is a smart, level-headed young surgeon who wouldn’t  _ dream _ of doing what you did today. So the only logical explanation I can come up with for why you abandoned all reason is because you are so concussed you didn't know any better. And if you are so concussed that you didn’t know any better, then you belong in a cot in the hospital tent and not bumbling around my OR mucking things up. I won’t have it, Hunnicutt!”

BJ can feel the exact moment when Potter’s words raze to the ground all the fortifications he’s managed to build up around himself with sutures and stubbornness. His CO is right - about everything. BJ’s place was here. He should have let Radar bring him back to the OR to be looked at. If not that, then he should have obeyed Margaret and gone back with her in the Jeep with the helicopter pilot. There were people up on that hill looking for survivors. They would have found Hawkeye eventually. He was so blinded by his need to make sure his bunk mate was ok that he forgot, just for a moment, to be a doctor. He broke his oath and that realization is enough to rob him of all his remaining strength. What Potter says next is nearly his undoing.

“We needed you in the OR today,” his CO says quietly as Margaret busies herself with something across the room and pretends not to be listening. “I needed your hands. 

“You let me down, Son. I expected so much more from you.” BJ’s not sure which version of Potter he hates more: the one who was yelling at him earlier, or this soft spoken one with betrayal in his voice.

BJ hangs his head in defeat, pulling in a shuddering breath that shakes his entire frame. Every nerve raw and sparking within him. “I shouldn’t even be here.” 

Potter surprises him by placing a hand lightly on his shoulder. “I understand, BJ. I really do. I’d give my eyeteeth most days to be back home with my Mildred, but that’s not going to happen. At least not any time soon. I’ve made my peace with that, and you should too. Put whatever this is away. Stow it under your bunk and do the job. Then maybe, if we’re lucky, we can come out the other side of this thing alive and whole.” Potter squeezes his shoulder gently. “But that’s not going to happen if you keel over on us at any moment. You look like death warmed over, Hunnicutt. Let Margaret take your over to post op to get checked out. I’m not fond of my surgeons running around camp looking like they’ve just been trampled by a herd of wild horses.”

“And Hawkeye?” BJ asks pitifully, hating how hoarse and tired his voice sounds. 

“Winchester and I will take care of Pierce.”

BJ nearly rolls his eyes at the thought of how insufferable Charles will be if he pulls off the miracle BJ was supposed to perform and saves Hawk. Yet for all his faults, Charles is a capable surgeon and he and Potter are the only ones BJ would trust to work on Hawkeye if he can’t. At least it’s not one of the unknown reinforcements brought in from the 8063rd.

“This is not up for debate, Hunnicutt,” Potter says, mistaking his silence for defiance. “Go with Margaret, and I’ll let you know the minute anything changes with our boy.”

BJ nods and the Colonel slaps his thighs with his hands.  _ That’s it _ , the move implies,  _ case closed _ . Nothing BJ says now will alter the course they’ve set. 

Potter rises from the bench and heads for the OR door but pauses before pushing through. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Hunnicutt. If I so much as catch a whiff of you giving Major Houlihan a hard time about getting checked out, I’ll have you on latrine duty for the rest of your career. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.” BJ mumbles and Potter storms out of the room. The threat is not an idle one and Margaret is eyeing him from near the sinks like she’s just loving the idea of seeing him up to his keister in refuse for the rest of the war. A fitting punishment for his numerous crimes. She has to be angry at him. He’s taking her away from her job, from the OR. From helping Hawkeye and the rest of the wounded. And yet, she’s doing her best not to show it. She can probably sense how close he is to the edge. How one harsh word from her right now might reduce him down to a quivering pile of ash. And it would. It really would.

“Can you help me?” He asks quietly after it becomes obvious he’s not going to be able to get up from the bench without assistance. Margaret’s face goes blank again. She slides into that state of clinical detachment they all seemed to have mastered here at the 4077th and reaches out to start helping him up without comment. She’s a warm and strong presence beside him but he doesn’t lean on her. He won’t lean on her. He doesn’t deserve it. 


	4. Chapter 4

It’s slow going at first. Margaret eases in under his arm and leads them out of the scrub room but BJ’s feet are uncooperative. They’re heavy and cumbersome and it takes monumental effort just to keep putting one in front of the other. 

He keeps his eyes fixated on the floor as they go. People are watching. He can feel their gazes on him as he limps by, this evening's entertainment, courtesy of their friends on the other side of the 38th Parallel. Exhausted and defeated, he is also trying very hard not to lean against Margaret all that much because he still feels unworthy of her aid. He can’t take the looks in the nurse’s eyes right now; the judgment, the pity. The weight of Potter’s disappointment and Margaret’s apparent silent treatment are burdens enough for him to bear at the moment.

The steel of the x-ray table is cold against his back when they eventually reach the room where the films are taken. Massive equipment hums around him and on any other day, he might have found some peace in the white noise. But not today. Today the slight vibrations run along BJ’s body and grate against already exposed nerves as he tries his best to sit still. Every inch of him pulsates with pain, but he endures it in silence as a tech, dressed head to toe in heavy shielding, comes back into the room to reposition things every so often. The elderly man promises it’ll all be over soon, but BJ hardly hears him over the roaring in his ears.

When it’s all over, Margaret’s face swims into blurry focus above him. She’s uncharacteristically quiet as she helps him to sit up and slide off the table, expressionless even when he can’t help but choke on a moan when things are shifted and pulled. She doesn’t even dress down the x-ray tech when he explains how long it will take to process the films, even though both of them are well aware of how long the process takes. She remains as uncommunicative as one of his patients in the OR as she steers them, not towards post-op like BJ is expecting, but away towards a door leading outside. It takes his still concussed brain several seconds to realize what she’s doing.

He notes that Margaret has a bag of supplies tucked up under her free arm, the direction they’re headed. The path is as familiar to him as the smell of his daughter’s hair after a bath. She’s going to treat him in the Swamp, and away from the prying eyes of his colleagues and the post-op patients. If BJ were the type, he would have pulled the blond-haired nurse in closer and kissed the top of her head.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she mutters, seemingly reading his thoughts as they make their way slowly across the boot packed earth. BJ can’t help but smile. It seems Margaret has finally decided to abandon her quest to give him the silent treatment. And it’s perfect timing, too, because BJ’s pretty sure he’s not going to be able to maintain his side of their standoff much longer either. His knees are beginning to wobble and his muscles strain as he struggles to remain upright.

“_Enough_ _already_, Hunnicutt,” Margaret rebukes, just as BJ sags heavily against the side of her. The added weight doesn’t seem to bother the nurse in the slightest as she adjusts slightly and continues marching them towards the Swamp.

All around them, the camp buzzes with activity. They don’t pass anyone on their way to the Swamp, but BJ can sense people awake and restless behind their tent flaps. In the distance, behind the mountains, lightning can be seen flickering across the sky in flashes of white and gray. Heavy clouds, low in the nighttime sky and pregnant with rain, are eating up the stars as they race in from the East and there's a kind of static charge in the air. The kind he can feel in the back of his teeth. He hopes this is an actual storm rolling in and not just heat lightning. Korea has been teasing them with the promise of rain for ages, and they need this. The entire camp needs a reprieve from the weather, a break from the obsessive heat that has been baking them for months. To BJ, it’s like being trapped in a pressure cooker, headed for some cataclysmic explosion that will shake the world so hard he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to put the shattered pieces back together. The lid was closed over his head the day Hawkeye left for the front and the pressure has steadily been increasing ever since, and the events of the day have made it so much worse. They’re headed for something. He’s not sure what that is, but he can feel it in his gut. It gnaws at his insides, demands to be named, but he won’t do it. Not yet. Not until someone is standing there before him, telling him, without a doubt, that Hawkeye is dead. Until that time, he will accept nothing less than a full recovery. That storm in the distance can bring only relief.  _ Right _ ?

When they finally reach the Swamp, BJ tries to leave all that uncertainty and fear on the doorstep and is relieved when it doesn’t follow him through. It doesn’t go away, just sits there on the threshold like an obedient dog, next to Charles’ boots, expecting to be let back in at some point. BJ does his best to ignore it as Margaret helps him down onto his cot and wrinkles her nose. Whether it’s at the noises he’s making or the state of his living quarters, he can’t be sure. Margaret is all business now and he watches her from the corner of his eye as he wraps his arms around his middle again and tries to breathe through the pain.

A nurse stops by the door and drops off more supplies until the cot beside him is laden with them. Margaret procures a stool from the hidden depths of the tent and sits down on it directly in front of him. BJ is so tall that she has to position herself between his legs. Under normal circumstances, this might be awkward, but BJ is just too tired to care anymore. He is exhaustion personified. Fatigue that has sprouted two legs and a head and gone stumbling about the camp calling itself BJ Hunnicutt. 

Silence descends again as Margaret tries to decide where to begin. She reaches out a hand but then stops with it hovering mid-air. Thunder rumbles in the distance, far enough away that they barely hear it but violent enough that it shakes the ground beneath their feet. Margaret is hesitating, like she’s unsure if their rather professional relationship up until this point warrants what she’s about to do, will survive the level of intimacy this exam of hers will require, because they’re never going to be the same again after this. 

BJ, on the other hand, has no defenses left. He’s as raw and as open as a wound and he no longer cares who sees the exposed bits of his soul. But he can’t make this decision for her. She has to make this next move on her own.

BJ watches as determination shutters whatever internal turmoil was playing out in Margaret’s mind and an air of detached indifference fills the room. This is what makes Margaret a terrific nurse. She can turn it off – for a while, at least. She can flip that switch inside and treat him like any other patient. She might toss her cot across the room over it later when she’s alone in her own space, but right now BJ could be the North Korean who just shot down her best friend and she would treat him the same. And yet, there’s still something there behind the focused squint of her eyes. A lingering gentleness in her touch that seems to say:  _ I know why you did it. I understand now. If I was in your shoes, I might have even done the same thing. _ But maybe it’s just the concussion taking. 

Margaret goes for his bandages first and peels the gauze away slowly, using room temperature saline to help soften the parts that stick to his skin. There isn’t much light in the Swamp on a good day, but Margaret bends a lamp shade so the injured side of BJ’s face is bathed in a soft yellow light. She makes little noises of approval as she checks them for signs of infection. “Whoever treated these in the field did a pretty good job. I don’t think you’ll need any stitches.”

BJ sighs. He can smell her perfume when she leans in close; a light, flowery scent that reminds him of Peg and the garden she used to keep back home. Nothing like the heavy, syrupy fragrances his grandmother used to wear. It makes him a little dizzy as he closes his eyes and imagines its Peggy’s hands floating over his face and neck, lingering at his pulse points as they sit beneath the old elm trees behind the house. He smiles a little when he realizes it’s Margaret discreetly taking his vitals. He begrudgingly opens his eyes and the delicate colors of Peggy’s garden give way to the khaki green of the Swamp. Damn, he could have stayed in those particular memories for hours.

Margaret tugs at the hem of his shirt and BJ leaves the memories behind to focus on unbuttoning the front of his uniform. His fingers are shaking slightly and he can hardly feel the buttons with his numb fingertips, but he somehow manages to get them all and Margaret helps him ease it down off his shoulders and away from his torso. The undershirt he’s wearing, which had been pristine and freshly washed when he put it on this morning, is streaked with soot and blood and sweat. Margaret doesn’t even bother trying to save it or make him lift his arms to pull it up over his head. She just finds a small pair of surgical scissors amidst her supplies and makes quick work of the flimsy fabric. When she pulls the ruined shirt away from his torso, she does her best to keep her face a mask of indifferent calm. But BJ can see the exact moment her eyes go wide with shock. 

BJ looks down and then nearly laughs at the livid purple and blue bruises dotting his skin. How every inch of him that wasn’t covered by his uniform is blackened with soot. Just like Hawkeye. In fact, there’s hardly a place on his torso that isn’t bruised or blackened. The worst of it is lower on his abdomen, just to the left and a little above his navel where the bruising is so bad, it’s nearly black. If they hadn’t just come from x-ray, BJ is pretty sure Margaret would be demanding that they go back there this instant. She begins to prod the area and BJ cries out.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” she demands, her deft hands running over every other inch of him as he tries not to pass out from the pain. Outside, the approaching storm whips a deliciously cool wind in through the open flaps of the tent but BJ is sweating so badly it does little more than make him shiver miserably. Margaret throws his robe over his shoulders and he burrows into the soft fabric, chasing after some hidden warmth. It’s one of the only comforts afforded to him in this place and, were he able, BJ might have curled up under it and gone to sleep right then and there. 

“Answer me, BJ.” They’re on to first names now. That can’t be good. 

He swallows down nausea and forces his clenched teeth open. “I don’t think so.” 

He can see the wheels in Margaret’s brain churning. The bruising and the concussion and the pain he’s in are going to earn him a one way ticket to a night in post-op for observation, there’s no question of that now. Arguments of how he can convalesce just as easily here as in post-op rise up and then die in his throat. Potter’s earlier threat is one reason he keeps quiet. The fact he’ll be able to get regular updates on Hawkeye a lot easier over there is another. BJ won’t be able to keep an eye on things if he’s confined to quarters.

“So are we walking, or do you want me to get you a wheelchair?” Margaret asks, standing before him with hands on hips. There’s no preamble. She knows he knows what needs to be done and no one ever accused Margaret Houlihan of beating around the bush.

It's an easy enough answer. “I’ll walk.”

The Major procures a pair of scrubs from her pile of supplies and BJ is secretly relieved. He’d been dreading the idea of putting on one of those horrid, pajama-like dressing gowns they normally put their patients in. Scrubs are such a better alternative to parading around post-op in his skivvies.

The scrub top comes first. It occurs to BJ somewhere between the moment she pulls the shirt down over his head and he has to pause to pant through the pain of putting one arm through, that the fact Margaret Houllihan is sitting here in the Swamp, helping him dress, should bother him. This entire thing should be bothering him. BJ can’t remember the last time he had to let someone else examine him. Do these things for him that he should be able to do for himself. But exhaustion, it seems, has eroded away his pride. He has nothing left to fight with. 

BJ rushes through getting his next arm through and then suddenly, all that’s left are his pants. BJ bites into his lip hard enough to draw blood as he leans back and unhooks his belt. The top button takes a moment of fumbling, but that soon, too, is free. Margaret supports him as best she can, offering her own brand of cold comfort by rubbing small circles into his back with her hand when the pain flares again and horrible noises are torn from his throat. BJ clings to her like a lifeline, and she lets him. In fact, she wraps her arms around his shoulders when he starts to shake and talks him through the sudden spasms.

“That’s it, Hunnicutt,” she soothes. “Just breathe through it. In and out.”

BJ closes his eyes, puts his hand on the arm Margaret has wrapped around him and fights against the strong wave of emotion this small moment with her conjures. He chokes on it a little as his eyes fill, but he won’t let the tears fall. This isn’t about him. None of it is. It’s about Hawkeye. That friend of his that is still fighting for his life over in the OR. The one he nearly forgot about sitting here wallowing in his own self-pity and pain. There’s still work to be done. He’ll let himself come apart only when he knows for sure that this nightmare is over. 

“Why did you go looking for him?” Margaret asks out of the blue, startling BJ from his thoughts. Her voice is peculiar.

“I had to,” he replies after a moment of thought, knowing it to be God's honest truth. He would do it again, too. In a heartbeat. 

Realization hits BJ with a sudden and unexpected clarity. As horrible and selfish as people might see it, he would search for Hawkeye all over again if it came down to it. 

Margaret is shaking her head as she releases her grip on his. “How do you two keep  _ doing _ that?”

“Do what?”

Margaret sits down beside him on the cot, their arms almost touching. “Shut out the rest of the world. Forget about rank and duty and just... break the rules for each other like that.”

Margaret is turned just far enough away from him that BJ can’t see her face. Can’t figure out what kind of answer she’s looking for here. This is probably the most personal conversation he’s ever had with Margaret Houllihan and he suspects it’s about a lot more than BJ’s proclivity for ignoring direct orders. 

“I think,” he says after a moment, “it helps to not care so much.”

She huffs. “I’m not like you two.”

“I know.”

“I  _ have _ to care.”

“I know that, Margaret.”

“They’ll take all this away from me if I don’t.” Her words paint a picture inside his head as BJ sits there at a loss for words. The long and arduous years of her Army career are spread out before him, a scarred and scorched map surrounded by a huddled group of entitled men who would love nothing more than to see her fail. Scrutinizing every inch of it, ashes falling from the ends of their cigars and singeing the corners. He can only imagine how terrible it’s been, or how hard it must be for her to watch himself and Hawk flout the rules at every turn without so much as a reprimand. He suddenly feels very small and completely unworthy of even being in the same room as her. 

When BJ is ready to attempt the whole getting dressed thing again, Margaret resumes her duties, all traces of the strange conversation they just had gone from her face. She helps him to rise a little ways up off the cot so they can shimmy the waistband of his pants down over his narrow hips. She attacks his boots next and has just started tugging at a pant leg when BJ cries out at a sudden and unexpected pain. 

He doesn’t mean for it to be so loud, but it is. He startles Margaret as he digs his teeth into his knuckles to keep from doing it again when she lets go of his leg and it swings downwards. He must black out or something because all of a sudden Margaret is right there in his face, taking his head in her hands and calling out his name. He fists his hands in the blanket beneath him, trying to ride out the agony slowly creeping up his leg. Impossibly sharp blades move along his skin, drawing blood as they go. Chils, prickly and cold, race up the back of his neck and settle at the base of his spine. He lists to one side unexpectedly, but Margaret’s hand is there to stop him from toppling over.

“When did this happen?” she demands and BJ risks a glance downwards. The entire side of his right leg is covered in burnt flesh and deep wounds. They’re bleeding freely, staining the already dark fabric of his pant leg. The boot Margaret removed a few moments ago is on its side on the floor and blood is dripping from the laces. He hadn’t even noticed. How could he not have noticed. 

“Hunnicutt!” Margaret snaps, like it isn’t the first time she’s had to call out his name. He blinks. “Tell me where it hurts.”

“E-every-everywhere.” 

His teeth have begun to chatter. He can hear them rattling as the chills come on again, full force. He’s shaking, the whole cot shuddering beneath him as Margaret makes him lie down and calls out for help. 

Thunder chooses that exact moment to crash above their heads, swallowing her cries as the heavens rip apart and great sheets of rain begin to pelt the roof of the tent. 

It’s here. The gathering storm has finally arrived and the deluge is enough to wash away any barricades BJ might have left. 

His eyes roll up into the back of his head. He can feel himself being pulled under the great wave that comes to crash down over his head, only he’s too far gone to give a shit. It’s better here anyway, under the water. Things don’t hurt as much. It doesn't take quite so much effort just to be. So he lets it drag him down into the dark, for as any man whose been at the 4077th for long will tell you, the gifts of oblivion are often so much more enjoyable than the cold truths of this godforsaken war. 

He thinks of Peg’s garden as the darkness comes to claim him.


	5. Chapter 5

Dear Dad, 

You’re always telling me I never write to you enough. Well, here you go. Another missive from the fabulous South Korea, penned personally by yours truly and coming to you live from the front lines. You read that right, Dad. The Army, in its infinite wisdom, as seen fit to send I, Benjamin Franklin Pierce, your son and heir, into the hornets’ nest. But don’t worry about me, Dad. I’ve got lots of kids with guns protecting me. You know, This Man’s Army and all. I keep telling them they’d have better luck with cans of bug spray, but the joke seems lost on them. Pity, because it’s probably the best one I’ve come up with all week. And that’s saying something. I guess it’s hard to stay on your toes when every minute of your day is spent elbow deep in someone else’s guts. But I digress. Hey, write to the president while I’m thinking of it, would ya? And let him know how things are going out here? I tried already, but either the North Koreans keep bombing our mail trucks, or he’s ignoring me. Honestly, Dad, I don’t know which one of those to believe these days.

Speaking of the esteemed Harry Truman, how are things back home? Is old Mrs. Henry keeping you fed like she promised? Even more importantly, has she let out my apartment yet? If sweet talking is all it takes, tell her I said thank you for the box of cookies she sent me last week. BJ enjoyed them immensely. He let me know as soon as he handed me the empty box after he accidentally ate them on purpose. 

I’ve actually been thinking about home a lot lately, Dad. You mostly, but the apple trees, too. I know I missed spring, but those apple blossoms keep popping up. BJ’s daughter, Erin, sent some flower petals the other day and they reminded me so much of you, I had to go hide in the shower tent and cry. That doesn’t happen too much anymore. Between our camp shrink, Sydney, and the callouses I’ve managed to develop walking around this place every day, I think I might actually be starting to get used to this place. Me! Your son! Shocking, I know. Calm yourself, Dad! I can hear those shouts of indignation even over here. 

But all joking aside, I hope you don’t worry yourself about me all the time any more. I’ll try to write more, in case you still do. I guess a lot of parents are worried about their kids right now, and I’m not the only one with a father who worries too much. I sew these soldiers back together all day, Dad, and sometimes I forget to stop and remember that they’re somebody’s son. We’re all somebody’s sons - or daughters - over here, so I don’t really understand why we keep trying to murder each other over silly things like lines in the sand.

How are things at work? Strange question, I know, seeing as how I am sitting in the middle of a war zone while you are, hopefully, in your favorite easy chair in the parlor, sipping that wonderful bourbon I found for you that last Christmas in Vermont. It’s just, those little things that I miss the most. The crabapple cove pie making contest. Mr. Jacob’s rose garden. The softness of things over there. Sometimes I get a taste of it when I get to stay in a hotel in Seoul. That’s when I can almost close my eyes and pretend that I’m back home with you. Who would have thought a tacky Korean hotel room could remind a guy so much of home.

I’m getting out of here soon, Dad. They radioed and said they were getting ready to evacuate because the fighting is getting so bad. Just the other day North Korea tried to take us out. They’re not supposed to do that, but sometimes I think the closer you get to the front here, the less sense everything makes. The power is out and half the sad excuse for a hovel they set up shop in is gone, so I’m writing this to you by candle light! How Dickensian of me, huh? Get me a top hat and an overcoat and I’ll start calling myself Charles. No, I take that back. South Korea has enough people named Charles’ in it right now.

I worked on an officer, today, Dad. An honest to god officer – they keep telling me, like it’s supposed to impress me, or make a difference, or something. Rank still baffles me, especially out here. Battlefield wounds are battlefield wounds no matter who’s got them, but somehow the kid who’s father just happens to be a big deal around here is expected to get more of my time then the poor corporal who dragged him in here while on the brink of death himself. I’ll have you know the stacks of field manuals they made me read before sending me to this place certainly didn’t say anything about checking a man’s insignia before diving in to help. But that’s what they expect of me around here. And so Officer Boy is headed back to the 4077th with me while they work to set up a new aid station somewhere else, preferably a lot farther away from the fighting. I think they’re glad to be rid of me. Never let it be said that my innate ability to talk a person to death is a burden. I knew if I kept on long enough about the state of things, they’d eventually let me go home.

Potter’s not going to be too pleased. There’s a good chance the general’s son is not gonna make it, and I know this makes me a hypocrite, Dad, but there are some soldiers no one wants to pronounce. Not even me. Three years I’ve been here, and that part just never gets any easier, no matter whose son it is.

Well, the time has come, Dad! They’re going to let me exchange the horrors of war for the horrors of Igor's mess tent cooking instead! I’m headed back to camp and I’ll write more when I can. I love you dad. 

...

Ok, I’m back. 

When I close my eyes, I can see the trees. Do you remember that one time someone came to town and honest to god asked us why anyone in their right mind would name their town after something so inedible as a crabapple? I thought old Mrs. Henry was going to have a stroke right then and there. Excellent practice for me, a scene people would be talking about for years around town if she just keeled over. I could have done it though, dad. Saved her life. Well, maybe. Strokes are tricky business, but you didn’t work most of your life to send me to med school for nothing.

I remember some springs when the trees would bloom in such intense colors, it would make your eyes hurt. Remember that, Dad? Remember walking down the avenues and just… not saying anything, because what can you say about something so beautiful? Mom used to collect the blossoms, and any other flower she could get her hands on. Remember? How she’d steal your highball glasses, and not the cheap ones either, and put bouquets of flowers all over the house? Lily of the valley on the sideboard in the dining room because the window there would waft the scent around the house so perfectly, it was like you had candles lit in each room? Or the lilac she used to put right beside the telephone on the table in the hall by the front door so you couldn’t excuse yourself from it, even to make a phone call? Or the books in your library we still find apple blossoms pressed into? BJ’s little one, Erin, sent him flowers last month and I was reminded so much of home, I had to run into the shower tent to cry. Had to be alone. Can’t show weakness in front of the men and all that, but don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m getting better at not spontaneously bursting into tears over here. MacArthur has toughened me up, put hair on my chest, so to speak, and made me a _ real _ man. Are you proud of that, Dad? I wonder a lot if you are.

I flew today. That’s when I saw the trees for the first time. I flew and closed my eyes, and it only took a few minutes of free fall for me to see the blossoms explode behind my eyes. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Reds so red they looked like blood. Whites so white, they made my head ache. 

Remember what you said to me, that day on the train platform, Dad? When we said goodbye? You made me promise to take care of myself. To stay out of trouble and stay alive. Well, I did that, Dad. For three whole years I kept myself alive, and kept what felt like half of North and South Korea alive, too. I wanted to quit so many times, but I didn’t, because as much as I want to come home, there are people here who need me.

Don’t be mad at Joe, Dad. He’s our pilot. I started calling him Silent Joe half way through our ride back because the guy wouldn’t even crack a smile, but I get it now. He can barely speak English. He’s Italian, or at least I think he’s Italian. I couldn’t really tell what he was screaming at me over the alarms and the smoke and the explosions. All I know is that he’s the best damn pilot in the entire Asian theater. Want to know how I know this? Because he managed to maneuver his way out of the path of a jet. An actual, honest to god, fighter jet. A fighter jet, I feel I should mention, that was headed straight for us. Well, get Silent Joe a medal, because he maneuvered us out of the path of that jet. Sure, he lost control afterwards and we started spinning out, headed for the ground. But you mustn’t blame Silent Joe, Dad. It wasn’t his fault. His country probably pulled his birthday from a hat, just like mine did. Just like all of ours did. No one wants to be here. But thank god for Silent Joe. Without him I think…

What was he saying? 

Where was he going with this? 

It’s so hard to keep things straight with his brain doing that strange, augmented reality thing. 

_ Guess what I’m trying to say, Dad, is don’t blame Joe for me. He did his best. _

Hawkeye opens his eyes and the pain comes, so he closes them again, but nothing makes sense there, in the blackness behind his eyes. He’d been writing a letter. He gropes for the pages, his favorite pen, pens are so hard to come by in Korea. But it’s not there. None of it’s there. Like his thoughts, all scattered.

He tries the eye opening thing again. Pain forks through his brain. His eyes can’t see anything other than undulating white, and there’s so much pain. Pain was not something the army prepared him for. _ We’ll keep you safe _ , they promised. _ As a prominent member of the medical community and a valued asset to the army, we’ll make sure you’re well taken care of _, they said. When this whole god forsaken war is over, Hawkeye knows exactly what he’ll say to the Army about how he’s been treated. 

_ Dear Dad, _

_ Please remember to put in your letter to the president how the virulent lack of cleanliness in this camp is deplorable. Put an Esquire after your name, maybe someone will listen. _

God, now he sounds like Margaret. 

Margaret. 

BJ.

BJ was up on the helipad when that… leaping lizards, was that really a plane he remembers seeing? Was it really careening towards them? Had Silent Joe really maneuvered them out of the way so fast Hawkeye nearly got thrown out of the helicopter? Nearly? Is that the right word? Thinking too much about it makes his head hurt, so he retreats back into the trees. But they smell funny. Everything smells funny here. It’s like charred flesh and iron blood. God he hates that smell. If there’s one thing that’s going to haunt him about this place, it’s that smell. He doubts he’ll ever be rid of it, or be able to attend a barbeque again.

Hawkeye decides to focus on other things, instead. Like where in the hell he is. Opening his eyes still isn’t an option, so he lets awareness of his body seep back in. Awareness brings pain, but he can’t stay in this dream place forever. What would his father think?

_ Dear Dad, – _

“No,” he admonishes himself. “Focus.”

He’s on his back, if he can trust his own senses. It’s hot and something irritating is tainting the air. There was a plane, a crash. The helicopter he was in fell from the sky. 

So how is he even alive? 

“An excellent question,” he thinks he might say to himself. 

But he’s missing a piece. Something important. Something about Silent Joe. 

Hawkeye sits up abruptly, not entirely sure how he manages it, and takes in his unfocused surroundings. There’s a huge knot at the back of his skull that pulses in time with his heart. His legs don’t move when he tells them to and further inspection shows why. White bone from a compound fracture on his lower left leg glints up at him from the grass. He’s laying half in and half out of what appears to be a high clump of dried out grass, but his legs are over dirt… only his brain isn’t functioning enough to figure out why.

_ Dear Dad,… _

“Oh for Pete’s sake,” he moans, covering his eyes with his palms. He has to focus. Get help, because Hawkeye isn’t going anywhere on this leg.

Ignoring the pain of... well, everything, Hawkeye forces his eyes open yet again and this time, makes his poor brain acknowledge what it sees. His legs are lying in what appears to be a patch of grassless earth. To his left a wall of white obscures everything. To his right, the edge of a forest appears then disappears back into that same wall of white. In front of him… well that’s either a hallucination, or confirmation that a fighter jet, a French fighter jet if the insignia on the side is anything to go by, really did, indeed, force them out of the sky.

Silent Joe pulls up on the controls. The g-force shoves Hawkeye back against his seat. They’re spinning, they’re falling, Silent Joe is screaming at him. Things he can’t decipher. But in the end the words are clear as day, though he has no idea what they mean.

_ Ti prego perdonami. Mi dispiace.* _

And he’s letting go of the collar of Hawkeye’s shirt and letting him tumble from the body of the helicopter. He’s letting him go and there’s nothing left for Hawkeye to hold on to, and he’s falling and falling and falling. There’s nothing but swirling chopper blades to look at. Why would Silent Joe let go?

He hits the ground hard. The world goes black. He’s back in the aid station, penning his missive, only this time he gets to finish it.

_ Dear Dad, ... _

Hawkeye, leans over and throws up into the grass. Great wracking heaves shake his frame as he brings up blood and bile and he remembers everything. It’s like a bomb going off in his skull. Too late he realizes that shockwave isn’t really internal. The minefield, the minefield he’s been sitting in, is exploding. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, known as Hawkeye to his friends, the man who just survived a free fall from a helicopter, is blown backwards. Something impacts his middle. Something hot and hard and unrelenting that drives all the air from his lungs. He’s blasted backwards on a wave of air and fire and noise. Back towards his trees. Back towards his home, as the war finally seals his letter in blood.

_Dear Dad._

If only he’d remembered his pen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Please forgive me. I’m sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s not like up on the landing pad. BJ doesn’t scatter this time. He loses consciousness completely and is carried away by the storm. Oblivion claims him and it feels like a very long time before he’s ready to resurface. He dreams a lot down there in the dark, strange dreams of smoke and explosions. All of them are haunted by Hawkeye who calls out to him from far away, begging to be saved. When he cracks his eyes open in post-op some time later, those screams are still echoing around in his brain. 

BJ opens his eyes cautiously at first, mindful of his concussion and anticipating the worst. But there is thankfully not much pain or nausea.

They’ve put him in one of the last cots in the row, the one closest to the door, and there’s a nurse sitting at the foot of his bed. BJ blinks into the weak light of the tent and sees that she’s concentrating on his lower leg. Every so often he can feel a pressure there as she prods the shrapnel wounds, but again, no pain. A moment later she must find what she was looking for and a quiet tinkling can be heard as she deposits whatever it was into a little metal basin on the cart positioned beside her. She hasn’t noticed he’s awake yet, but BJ is fine with that for right now. Once she does, he’ll have to start facing things again. People will want to poke and prod at him. But more importantly, he’ll have to ask the hard questions. The ones he doesn’t want the answers to at the moment. He prefers to go on in ignorance, at least for a little while longer, and takes in his surroundings instead.

His body feels heavy and he imagines he would be in a great deal of pain if it were not for the strong painkillers he suspects he’s been given. They have him on fluids as well. An IV is attached to the back of his hand and its tube snakes up from it and towards the bottles of clear saline hanging from the pole beside his bed. There’s also a bottle that looks suspiciously like it was once full of plasma. The places he remembers being injured still ache, but his headache and the breath-stealing lightning bolts of pain he was feeling earlier thanks to his concussion seem to have faded. The only uncomfortable thing he’s experiencing at the moment is that strange tugging sensation as his nurse continues her work.

Risking a small turn of his head, BJ takes a moment to digest the world around him, post Storm. The ward is quiet in what he suspects is early morning calm. A pale light can be seen through the plastic covered holes punched into the tent side people keep trying to convince him are windows. Every bed in the two rows is occupied and BJ realizes he knows most of the inhabitants. His stomach flips and his heart grows heavy in his chest. These are people he lives with, shares his meals with. People whose names and ranks he has committed to memory because they’ve been together in the trenches of Korea for so long. People he failed yesterday when he went looking for Hawkeye at the crash sites instead of returning to the OR to help with the casualties. He wonders how many of them would be up and walking, instead of laid up in here, stewing in the stench of antiseptic, blood, and hidden decay, had BJ not been so selfish.

The guilt is too much, and he rolls his head in the other direction so he no longer has to look at the scene of his own making anymore. He’s surprised to discover a slumbering Father Mulcahy napping fitfully in a chair on the other side of his cot, chin resting on chest as he snores lightly. BJ hadn’t even noticed the man.

Father Mulcahy is dressed in the vestments of his station, but everything is slightly askew. His collar is not quite as straight as it should be and his uniform is rumpled and stained. There are lines of exhaustion etched on his face. Lines that weren’t there the last time BJ saw him. The fact that Mulcahy chose his bed to keep vigil by stirs something deep in his heart, a strange sort of sense of belonging mixed with guilt. He’s no more deserving of the Padre’s time than any other man in here. Regardless, it looks like the Father has been up most of the night and might have news of Hawkeye. BJ is just about to reach out and touch the man on the leg to rouse him when a voice from the end of his bed stops him.

“Please don’t.”

For a moment, BJ is worried that he inadvertently moved his leg and interrupted the woman’s work, but the look on her face tells him otherwise. She only has eyes for Father Mulcahy. “He only just fell asleep.”

The Priest lets out a sigh and mumbles something incoherent under his breath. BJ decides in that moment that his nurse is right. He shouldn’t be disturbed.

“Has he been here long?” BJ asks in an exaggerated whisper.

“Ever since they brought you in. But I think he’s been around the hospital since just after the shelling started. I was only just able to talk him into sitting down.”

The young woman rises from her chair and comes to stand beside his cot. It takes everything in BJ not to swat her hands away as she begins taking his vitals and scratching the results down on his chart. 

“I’m Emily, by the way,” she says as she lifts his gown to check on the damage hidden beneath it. So much for getting out of wearing one. 

“BJ Hunnicutt,” he mutters back irritably.

“So I’ve heard.” She’s smirking a little as she rehangs his chart on the hook at the foot of his bed. “Scuttlebutt around camp is that you ran off into a minefield to pull Captain Pierce out. You’re quite the celebrity around here.” 

BJ would have huffed at that, except Emily’s earlier prodding has awoken old hurts and it comes out sounding more like a groan. She checks his pulse again, smile fading. “How are you feeling? Any pain?”

“I’m fine,” he says dismissively. The discomfort he’s in is not the only reason for his racing pulse. He nearly grabs her hand as she lets go of his wrist. “Has there been any news?”

He holds his breath, not sure he’s really ready for the answer she might give. 

“Of Dr. Pierce?”

He nods furiously and in spite of his rising dizziness.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Hunnicutt. None that I know of.”

BJ’s heart sinks. Not the answer he wanted but one he was expecting. These things always took time. “Any chance you could go check for me?”

Emily shakes her head. “I’m under strict orders from Major Houllihan to clean out your leg and make sure you stay put until she comes back. I assume you’ve been here long enough to know why I won’t be disobeying those orders.”

BJ feels defiance bubble up in his throat, even though he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“But perhaps I can shed some light on things, my boy,” Father Mulcahy interjects from his chair before BJ can say anything he’ll regret. Emily takes advantage of the momentary distraction to return to her work at the foot of his bed as BJ turns towards the priest

“I’m glad to see your awake,” Mulcahy says solemnly, all traces of his acclaimed jocularity absent from his voice. “You gave us all quite a scare.”

Mulcahy looks as tired as he sounds and BJ is reminded, yet again, that he is not the only one who's been affected by yesterday’s events. That this war is not through with taking things from them.  _ Any _ of them. 

But the chaplain feels like he should be off-limits. There should be a shield around him, or a rule protecting him from days like this. There might very well be, but like the shelling of the 4077th yesterday, its been thrown out the window. He’s reminded again of oaths, of how little they mean to him now as he glances at the faces of the men and women in the beds around him. Wades through the shattered remains of his faith in humanity. This should never have happened. None of this should ever have happened.

“BJ, are you alright?” Father Mulcahy is leaning forward in his chair and there’s a warm hand on his arm. Emily has ceased her plunking. 

BJ runs a hand down the side of his face, his days old stubble like sandpaper against his palm. “I don’t know.” He says without thinking. 

“What’s happening to me?”

Mulcahy straightens with brows knit like he’s trying to figure out which version of that question he should answer. With a glance over at the outsider near the foot of BJ’s bed, he opts for the physical.

“You passed out in the Swamp, my friend. Gave Major Houllihan quite the shock, from what I’m told. They also had a terrible time trying to get you over to post-op in the rain.” He smiles and BJ thinks the room might actually brighten. Stupid concussion. “But I’m pleased to inform you that besides a moderate concussion, several broken ribs and a bit of internal bleeding they are certain will resolve on its own, you’re going to make a full recovery.”

“And Hawkeye?” BJ can’t help but ask. 

Father Mulcahy’s face falls again, taking with it all the warmth in the room. BJ holds his breath for the second time since waking up. 

“There’s no news yet, I’m afraid.” 

So much for hope. At least it wasn’t  _ bad _ news. 

“But what I can tell you,” Mulcahy goes on, seeming to sense BJ’s unease, “is that reinforcements from the 8063rd have arrived and are helping in the OR so that Colonel Potter and Dr. Winchester can devote their full time and attention to Captain Pierce.

“He’s in good hands BJ,” the priest finishes with a pat to his arm, “don’t trouble your mind about it.”

But BJ is going to trouble his mind about it. In fact, until someone carries Hawkeye out of the OR and BJ can see for himself that his friend is still breathing, he’s going to agonize over it. He won’t rest. He won’t ever find peace, no matter how hard the priest beside him tries to give it to him. Not until he knows.

In the moments when he actually lets himself stop and think about it, BJ is pretty sure his friend is still alive. It’s that connection between them, that one still sparking with life. If Hawkeye were dead, he would know. It’s always kind of been like that between them. Some strange link that lets them know when the other one is hurt or in danger. It’s saved them countless times. Lead them to each other through dense jungles, through towns without names. Helped them avoid burnouts and mental breakdowns. It’s a bond forged in war and death, in the guts of other men, and BJ imagines he can still feel it inside of him, strung tighter than ever, singing at him every time he goes back to pluck at it and make sure it’s still there. 

Hawkeye is alive. 

He has to be.

***

The waiting is the hardest part, he decides. Someone comes and whispers something in Emily’s ear once she’s finished with his leg and she disappears. Even Father Mulcahy leaves him after a while, though he promises to come back and give BJ news of Hawkeye as soon as he has any. BJ’s only companions are the other patients in the cots around him. The ones he can’t bring himself to look at too closely quite yet. Then there’s the unfamiliar doctor on loan from the 8063rd. That poor guy has been by several times already, though BJ can’t for the life of him remember his name. He feels bad about that at times. The guy is here as a favor to them, and BJ can’t even be bothered to remember his name… He remembers his shoes, though. He threw up all over them the first time the doctor pointed a penlight in his face to check on his pupil responses. 

BJ’s injuries are quiet for the most part, thanks to the meds. It’s his racing thoughts he has to worry about. No drug in the world could alleviate those. He tosses and turns fitfully in his cot, unable to turn it off or escape the gnawing anxiety of the fact that Hawkeye is literally just a flap of canvas away from him, and being worked on by surgeons other than himself.

BJ has no doubt that the Colonel and Winchester will do their best. They are both incredible surgeons, and have proven that to BJ time and time again. They’ve fought side by side in the trenches for years. He’s watched them pull miracles out of thin air in the middle of hell and he knows they will give it their all. But will it be enough? Every time he closes his eyes he can see Hawkeye’s terrible injuries. When it comes right down to it, can he trust them to go the extra mile to save Hawkeye like he would have? It makes his stomach roll to think of the answer to that question.

He has visitors from time to time. Radar stops by and offers a stammering apology for things BJ can’t recall (and tries not to because trying to remember everything that happened right after the crash still makes his head pound). Klinger comes, and so does Igor from the mess, of all people, but their visits are short and clipped. Everyone had a job to do, and BJ isn’t sure which feels worse: his injuries, or the fact that he can’t be out there helping his camp. He watches from the sidelines as borrowed doctors from other units treat his patients, fingers itching to do more. He listens to the moans of the men and women in the cots beside him and yearns to go to them. The nurses always do, but it takes too long. He’s ineffectual, and that is not a feeling he’s used to. Especially not here in his own MASH.

It’s Father Mulcahy who shows up the most as the hours pass. He hovers around like he’s waiting for something. BJ suspects he’s trying to give him every opportunity to unload. Unburden. Confess his sins of the past two days, but he can’t. Or won’t. BJ is on a mission to atone for his particular sins through a trial by fire, not quiet absolution from the one person in camp who is going to understand why he did what he did and forgive him for it. BJ doesn’t deserve that. It’s too easy, too tidy. He deserves the pain and the endless, restless hours of waiting for news of Hawkeye. So he stays silent, and even feints sleep when the Father returns for the last time.

There are no clocks in post-op and so BJ marks the passing of time by the light streaming in through the tent windows. It makes squares of light on the plywood floor and he watches as those patches slowly trudge across the boards. Two boards for every hour, or so he figures. It takes one particular patch nearly the entire length of the floor before they bring Hawkeye in.

BJ knows something is up the moment Margaret bursts into post-op and scans the room. Her eyes land on BJ but rather than come over to speak with him, she grabs one of the on-loan doctors and has a harried, whispered conversation with him. She leaves again as the doctor and several orderlies start preparing to move one of the less critical patients out of the ward. BJ watches all of this from his cot, propped up on his elbows and trying to ignore the pain the position creates. He holds his breath as the OR doors open again, but it’s just Emily. She heads over in his direction, hands out and motioning for him to stay calm, but BJ ignores her and keeps his eyes glued to the OR door. 

Silence descends on the room. Not a single soul seems to breathe as a deeply unconscious Benjamin Franklin Pierce is carried into the post-op tent and placed carefully on the recently vacated cot. He’s mostly covered in bandages, but BJ can see enough of him to know he’s alive, though barely, it would seem. He’s up and on his feet before Emily even has time to react. He stumbles forward, has to grab onto the bar at the end of his bed where his chart hangs to keep from falling, but he doesn’t care. Hawkeye is here. He’s alive. BJ can touch him now, if he wanted to. And he wants to. Wants to take his hand and feel his heat. Prove to his eyes that what they’re seeing and trying to transmit to his concussed brain is actually true.

There’s a lot of angry whisper-shouting after that, mostly directed at him. Potter has followed Hawkeye out into post-op and is standing in front of BJ - covered in blood, Hawkeye’s blood – and demanding to know where exactly he thinks he’s going as Emily does her best to keep him seated on the edge of his cot. Margaret is there, too, and Father Mulcahy. Even the doctor on loan from the 8063rd shows up to try and get him to lie back in bed. But BJ isn’t having any of it. He stands his ground (figuratively). Even goes to pull the IV out from the back of his hand before Emily stops him. Works himself into a sweaty, wheezing frenzy before everyone finally realizes nothing they do now, short of sedating him, will keep him from seeing Hawkeye. Margaret appears between the cots with a wheelchair and a glower and then suddenly, BJ is getting his wish. He isn’t sure how it happens or what promises he had to make to get his away, but it’s actually happening. He can hardly believe it.

“I want you to know that I’m completely against this,” Margaret mutters in his ear when she brings his wheelchair to a halt beside Hawk’s bed. “He needs his rest. Five minutes, tops.”

“Yeah, alright,” he says automatically, barely registering the words coming out of his mouth. He swallows, trying to bring moisture back to his throat that has suddenly gone dry. Countless hours of anxiety and worry, the not knowing eating him alive from the inside out to get to this moment. 

“How is he?”

“Hunnicutt maybe we should...”

BJ cuts his commanding officer off with a blistering glare. “ _ How is he? _ ” 

If the demand has irritated Potter, he doesn’t let it show. “As well as can be expected. Vitals are stable at the moment but he still needs more work. Winchester was able to patch up the worst of the internal damage and I did everything I could for his leg. He’s holding his own.”

BJ glances back at Hawkeye with a nod as the surgeon half of him digests the information. It’s not the best news, but it’s not a death sentence either.

BJ is struck with the sudden urge to touch his friend, only there doesn’t seem to be a place on Hawkeye’s body that isn’t covered in bloody bandages or drainage tubes. He freezes with hand outstretched as he looks back over at his commanding officer. BJ can feel his eyes fill as he suddenly realizes he doesn’t know what to do. All his years of training, of watching families go through very moment, and he doesn’t know what to fucking do. 

BJ’s shoulders slump as Potter squats beside his wheelchair. The sound of popping joints fills the sudden silence. The Colonel lays a hand on BJ’s trembling knee. 

“He’s alive.”

BJ squeezes his eyes shut as the trembling continues.

“BJ, look at me.”

He can’t and warm tears start burning tracks down his face as they fall.

“Son…”

He forces himself to meet Potter’s eyes.

“This is not over yet.”

“I know,” he answers wetly.

“That friend of yours survived a helicopter crash, a land mine explosion and eight hours under the knife today. And as soon as things are cleared up outside he’ll be on the first transport out of here to the hospital in Seoul.

“He’s going to need you. There’s no going AWOL now, Hunnicutt.”

Potter captures BJ in an intense gaze. It’s demanding and he knows he won’t be released from it until he agrees to the terms being laid out. Terms he has a feeling he doesn’t even fully realize yet. Still, the answer is a no-brainer.

“Okay.”

Potter searches his face for a moment. BJ let’s all the masks he’s been carrying around since yesterday fall away and Potter apparently finds what he’s looking for.

“That settles it then. Now someone better help me up off this floor before I end up a permanent fixture in post-op!”

Potter’s request breaks the tension as everyone standing there chuckles and helps their fearless leader up onto his feet. BJ tries to join in on the joviality, but finds he‘s incapable. The charade requires too much energy to maintain and he’s going to need everything he has left to get through the next part of this nightmare, whatever that may be. 

It’s Margaret of all people who picks up on the fact he’s not rebounding along with the rest of them. She takes one look at him and then herds everyone away with a quiet “let's give them a few minutes.” BJ smiles his thanks at her when she reminds him one final time to make it brief. They both need their rest.

Both of them.

When did the world become so strange.

Whatever qualms BJ had earlier about touching Hawkeye are gone as he turns back towards his friend and takes one bandaged hand in his own. The sounds of post-op fade away until it’s just the two of them left. 

“Jesus, Hawk,” he almost laughs. “You scared the daylights out of me today.” 

The hand in his feels impossibly warm and BJ places it gently back on the bed. Those are burns the bandages are covering and BJ’s not about to cause his friend anymore pain. He wheels himself a little closer to the bed and rests a hand on Hawkeye’s chest instead, taking comfort in the steady ebb and flow of his respirations.

“What in the hell were you thinking, huh?”

Having a one sided conversation with Hawkeye like this is unnerving. BJ keeps glancing up at his friend’s face, half expecting him to open his eyes and make a joke about how stupid this entire situation is, but nothing happens. Hawkeye face remains impassive; as still and colorless as a corpse. The slow rise and fall of his chest beneath BJ’s hand is the only thing that proves what Potter said earlier is true.  _ He’s still alive. _

“I know you rigged it so that you would be the one to go to the aid station this time,” BJ goes on, undeterred. “You’ve really got to stop doing that, Hawk. My life isn’t worth any more than yours. You have just as much to lose as I do. And if you die, I’ll never forgive myself.”

BJ pauses as emotion clogs his throat. “You can’t leave me here, Hawk. I can’t do this goddamn job on my own.”

He lets his head fall. “Please don’t give up.”

His whispered words are met with silence, with the stillness of a comatose friend. Around them post-op goes about its business like nothing in the world has changed, and BJ doesn’t know whether to appreciate that fact, or resent it. 


	7. Chapter 7

_ Mess Tent 06:30 _

_ Number of cups of coffee ingested: 5 _

_ Number of cups of coffee ingested after specifically told not to by new current physician: 5 _

_ Total number of nurses pissed off about it: 1 _

...

Its busy in the mess hall. There’s a gaggle of service men from the army corps of engineers, sent in to restore the roads, having some sort of unsanctioned soiree around a beat up old transistor radio BJ remembers seeing around the camp a time or two. They’ve commandeered a few of the scrub nurses as well, and all of them are currently trying to pick up one of the Seoul stations. Only the old radio works about as well as everything else in this camp, and they aren't having much luck. That fact, however, doesn’t seem to put a damper on their moods. They crank the dial back and forth, again and again, cheering any time something that even remotely resembles music screeches out over the airwaves. They’re having fun and it’s pissing the hell out of BJ.

He sits off on his own at the end of one of the mess tables, as far away from the group as he can get. The contents of the 5 or so cups of coffee he’s just drunk sit gurgling in his guts as he works on his 6th. It tastes just as terrible as the previous five. Even more so now that it’s gone stone cold. 

He didn’t mean for that to happen. It’s just… for the past ten minutes, BJ has not been able to do anything but stare down into it.

The loose bits of Hawkeye’s chart that he’s been studying lie abandoned near his elbows. He’s trying very hard  _ not _ to go off on the noisy group palavering away on the other side of the room from him, and his white-knuckled grip on the cup seems to be the only thing stopping him. They’re grown adults sitting around a radio and laughing like children while the very people they’ve been sent in to help are lying one tent over, dying. 

BJ has been in this war long enough to know that most people need silly moments like these to survive this place, but Christ Almighty, does it have to be today? Does it have to be here, of all places? And do they have to be so goddamn loud? 

Someone finds Seoul City Sue and the crowd goes wild. She quickly dissolves into static, however, and their fervent cheers turn into over exaggerated groans. The search resumes and the aggravating cycle resets itself. It’s like an ice pick to BJ’s brain. A constant whittling that is slowly chipping away any resolve he might have just to leave them be. BJ could pack his things up and leave, agonize over Hawkeye in the privacy of his own tent, but this is  _ his _ Mess. This is  _ his _ MASH and he will be damned if a couple of ignorant kids are going to run him out of it. (Apparently he’s reached the irritable phase of his concussion.)

And so on and on it goes. The laughter and the cheers. The constant chatter and the blazen flirting. Hawkeye would have gotten a kick out of it. They probably would have gone over there and joined in. But BJ just wants to make it stop as the high pitched wine of static puts his teeth on edge and finally pushes him over the edge. 

“For the love of God, would you turn that damn thing  _ off _ ?” he bellows, spinning around on his bench, careful of his injured leg, to face the astonished soldiers. 

“There are people in the building next door  _ dying _ and you idiots are in here throwing a goddamn party! Show some respect for christ’s sake and TURN IT OFF!!” 

The words roll off his tongue like bits of flame and he doesn’t know who he surprises more, the group of young people or his CO who chooses that exact moment to walk into the mess and hear the entire thing. Potter doesn’t even need to say anything, he just levels BJ with a look of pure disappointment and all that fire goes out. Someone has the good sense to switch off the radio.

“Take it someplace else, eh boys?” Potter suggests, as BJ swipes at his stinging eyes and turns back around to his cup of sludge.

“We were only having a bit of fun,” someone quietly explains to Potter as the group slowly disperses. “We didn’t mean any harm.”

“I know you didn’t, son,” Potter replies. “No one’s in trouble, but party’s over all the same.”

BJ listens with his back turned as the soldiers and nurses shuffle out. For the second time in as many days, Potter comes to sit beside him on a bench, only this time, everything is different. Hawkeye is alive and out of surgery. BJ doesn’t hurt as much as he used to and can speak in coherent sentences again… except someone seems to have turned on the water works, and he has no idea how to make it stop. He’s not blubbering or anything, but it feels like any small thing might make him. Embarrassment, exhaustion, pain, anxiety, fear… they all tighten around him until fresh tears are rolling down his face every time he blinks. He turns his head away so Potter can’t see, even though he knows his superior officer can tell exactly what’s going on. Still, it feels like the right thing to do. 

Hide the evidence. They’re men, after all. Aren’t they? Never supposed to show fear? Never supposed to be weak?  _ Turn your head and hide your eyes and just pretend it isn’t happening. _

Potter lets him pretend for a full three minutes before he’s passing BJ a handkerchief discretely across the table, even though they’re alone. He takes it with a small, watery smile.

“Thought I told you to go back to the Swamp and get some shut eye,” Potter says after a few moments of silence punctuated by BJ’s intermittent sniffing.

“Couldn’t sleep. It was too quiet in there.” The irony of that statement is not lost on BJ and probably not on Potter, either.

“And did this little side trip to the Mess help you with that?”

“No,” BJ admits.

“I thought as much. Go back to the Swamp, Hunnicutt. You have a concussion and Pierce isn’t going anywhere until morning. The roads will be cleared for ambulances by dawn, or so they tell me. As soon as they are, he’s on the first bus out of here.”

“They couldn’t find us a helicopter?” BJ asks. 

“Apparently not. We just lost four of our best birds. There isn’t a helicopter left in Korea that can get him there faster than an ambulance. We’ll have to make due.”

BJ nods and they lapse into silence again. He plays with the edge of his coffee cup, running a fingertip over a small chip in the rim. The skin catches a bit as he admits, “they were just being so loud.”

Potter sighs heavily. “I know.”

“I didn’t mean to yell, it’s just… they’re throwing a party in here while he’s… while he’s...” 

_ While he’s lying in post-op, fighting for his life _ ,  _ and I can’t do anything to help him,  _ but BJ can’t say the last part out loud. They could still lose him. Everything is so precariously perched, and BJ refuses to be the one to tip the scales in the wrong direction by saying something he shouldn’t. Hope isn’t for war zones.

He stares at his cup of stonecold sludge as his eyes burn with renewed tears. These are angry ones. It's like one big cosmic joke, and the only one who would appreciate it or have a decent punchline is currently in a coma in post-op.

“We’re going to get him the help he needs,” Potter rallies. “Charles and I worked on him for a long time and there’s no reason he shouldn’t make a full recovery...

“...he just needs more care than we can give him here,” BJ finishes, buying into it - perhaps fool-heartedly. 

“He’s going to live, Hunnicutt. He just needs time.” 

It’s not like them to lie to themselves like this. As doctors, they know the odds. Even as he sits here quietly in the Mess with Potter, the war quiet outside for once, BJ’s mind is coming up with all manner of ways in which Hawkeye could die. Keeps reminding him what catastrophic consequences injuries like Hawkeye’s can have. Even if they do get him back there’s no promise that he’ll be the same, or that he’ll be able to keep practicing medicine. An even less likely chance he returns to the 4077th. 

But for tonight, under the meager light of the mess tent and with endless cups of stale coffee altering his perspective, he’s willing to ignore it all and allow himself to hope. 

Hawkeye knew how to hope. Could be oh so optimistic, sometimes. Or, at least when the war wasn’t knocking on their door and constantly shoving wounded down their throats like it was worried they were going to starve or something. It was never easy to be optimistic during those times. Not even for him.

Potter lays a hand on his shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m serious about the sleep, Hunnicutt. Doctor’s orders. Get some rest.”

BJ nods, not even bothering to offer the Colonel his hankie back. It’s his now. Evidence of this time and this place, of the moment when he cried. Not because someone died, but because they still might. Irrational tears because there is so much work left to do and that road to recovery is just about as bombed out and pockmarked as the roads in and out of their camp. It’s nothing Potter wants or needs back. It’s BJ’s to do with as he will. He pockets the handkerchief and grabs his crutches to leave.


	8. Epilogue

The next day dawns cloudy and cool, the cold front brought in by the previous day’s rain lingering around camp and dampening everyone’s spirits. Every so often it starts misting. It’s not enough moisture to be called rain, but plenty enough to be considered a nuisance. It beads on the sunglasses BJ has taken to wearing during the day, even when there’s no sun, thanks to the persistent headache still pounding away behind his eyes. He’s not taking his pain meds anymore either, and the dark glasses are the only thing that helps. 

BJ finishes securing Hawkeye to his cot in the back of the ambulance and then moves to the open rear door. A small group of people has gathered to see them off and Margaret is the first one to step forward. She hands him a canvas-wrapped package. “Just a few things for the road.” The package is lumpy and makes a clinking sound as he limps over to set it down on the seat he’ll be occupying for the next several hours. 

Father Mulcahy is next and his gift is a rosary. It’s made of rough wood and crudely constructed, yet feels substantial in his palm. He stares at it, rubbing the beads between his fingers absently. 

“I know it’s not your usual practice, but it would mean a great deal to me if you would hold it in your hand while you pray for him, if you should ever feel the need. The children at the orphanage made it.”

“I will,” BJ says thickly and pockets it.

Klinger and Radar’s parting gifts are simple enough. They are requests for BJ to radio camp often and keep them in the loop on how Hawkeye is doing. He shakes hands with each of them to seal the deal and then it’s only Potter left. 

The Colonel and the Captain hold each other’s gazes for a moment, two separate scenes on a tapestry, woven together by one common thread. 

BJ knows the strings Potter has pulled so that he can accompany Hawkeye to Seoul. He knows what the Colonel is risking by sending his best surgeon away for who knows how long on what may turn out to be a fool's errand. He tries to convey all of this silently between their shared connection.

“I want regular updates.” Potter says eventually. 

BJ wipes at his wet eyes under the glasses and nods. 

The ambulance driver is ready to go. He closes the back door and BJ moves to an open window. His side and leg throb painfully and there’s a moment of vertigo that nearly knocks him over, but it passes. 

“And don’t let them push you around, either,” Potter calls up to him over the roar of the engine.

“I won’t.”

The colonel reaches up a hand, which BJ grasps in farewell. “You’re there on General Hammond’s orders, remember that if they start to get too lippy.” 

“I will.” 

Potter’s hand slips from BJ’s as the ambulance begins to roll forward. 

“They won’t lift a scalpel unless I say so,” he calls out the window.

They all come together as the ambulance pulls away and the distance between them grows - his little band of rag tag army rejects, the members of which he loves more than he probably should. He doesn’t know when he’ll see them again, or if he’ll have Hawkeye with him when he does, but knowing that they’ll be here makes all the difference in the world. They’re going to love him, no matter how this story ends.

FIN

(To be continued in a part two!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank my friends Elizabeth and Tomino for their input and support with the early drafts of this fic. Without their help, this would have been a very different story. Love you guys.


End file.
